


A Songbird, a Crow

by aelibia



Series: The First One's Daughter [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Absurdism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Asexual Character, Author Does Not Endorse or Subscribe to Character Views, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Blue Jay Sidekick, Budget Camus, Cunnilingus, Dimension Travel, Discount Philosophy, Dominant Sakura Haruno, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Don't Like Don't Read, Existentialism, F/M, Femme Domme, Feral Chapter Titles, Haruno Sakura-centric, Imprisonment, Izuna has the Uchiha brain cell, Lampshade Hanging, Libraries Are Inherently Sexy, Light Dom/sub, Madara is a Bottom, Medic Haruno Sakura, Nihilism, Pansexual Character, Pining, Queer Character, Romantic Soulmates, Satire, Sensual Gardens, Sensual Tea Time, Sexually Submissive Madara, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Spa Treatments, Strong Haruno Sakura, Tags Contain Spoilers, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, This is not philosophy 101 make up your own mind, Time Travel, Time Travel Nothing to Fix Actually, Wall Sex, Warring States Period (Naruto), Weird Plot Shit, aroace character, just facts, no beta we die like men, now what, so many birds - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:41:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25044805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aelibia/pseuds/aelibia
Summary: Sakura finds herself flung through a dimensional portal during the battle with Kaguya. In the space of a moment, she loses everything: her soulmate, her friends, and her village. She gains a Clan.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Original Character(s), Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Izuna, Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Madara
Series: The First One's Daughter [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026121
Comments: 402
Kudos: 741
Collections: Down The Rabbit Hole, Time Travel and World Travel





	1. what the hail

**Author's Note:**

> Made this for MadaSaku weekend 2019!!!!

There is no victory without sacrifice: ancient words passed from clan to clan, tribe to tribe, ninja to ninja. Words meant to provide solace to those left behind, of no comfort for those on the receiving end of fate’s whetted axe.

Kaguya is wily, but in the end she is no match for the combination seal laid on her by Naruto and Sasuke. Sakura watches, her eyes never leaving Kaguya’s face, for a medic is every battle’s sentinel. While the boys’ eyes lock squarely on the threads of the seal that instantly begins wrapping around Kaguya’s body, Sakura looks into the woman’s face, and sees her smile wickedly before crumbling away into dust. 

A few moments later, Sakura understands why.

The lines of the seal, hungry, fail to dissipate with the rabbit princess, and rush to Sakura, devouring her from the feet up. She can’t move, and time seems to pass slowly as the boys turn to look at her with twin looks of horror on their faces. _This isn’t how it’s supposed to work,_ their eyes say, and then she vanishes into darkness.

It isn’t like passing out; it’s more like traversing a cave into its deepest point and turning off the light. Absolute darkness, so pure that she begins to hallucinate, her brain showing her images of what it thinks should be there in the absence of light to draw in.

There is no victory without sacrifice. And the success of the seal, it seems, requires such a sacrifice. Did it choose her? Or was she simply the closest one, caught up in the action by act of chance? She doesn’t know which feels worse.

Sakura strains against the darkness, feeling herself able to move again, but without earth, sky, anything, there is nowhere to move to, nothing to press against. She floats in an empty space not unlike the other worlds contained within some Mangekyo. It feels like eons pass, and she flexes her chakra here and there to remind herself she still exists, has a physical form, isn’t caught in a genjutsu.

And then, movement. A force grabs her entire body and pulls at the navel, drawing her in some sightless direction. She tries to fight, to struggle, but how can you fight against something that isn’t there? With nothing around her for comparison, she has no idea where she is going or how fast, but the way her hair spreads out behind her says _forward_ and _too damn fast._

And then, a pinprick of light. It grows larger faster than she can blink until the brightness is her whole world, and then she feels a sucking sensation as the force pulls her through what her body tells her is some kind of opening. A resting place for the dead? A final destination for all those sacrificed to the great causes of men?

But she isn’t the only sacrifice the seal will demand today.

She feels the severing of her soul bond like the snap of a bone when she passes through the void, and only then does she scream.

* * *

She wakes up to hard ground, a sharp voice, and an even sharper blade pressed against her throat. Her entire chakra network burns with the strain of use, and she feels a hollowness in her chakra reserves she hasn’t known in years.

“You are trespassing on the lands of the Uchiha Clan. State your name and purpose, stranger, or die.”

Trees. A forest. Scraggly plants clinging to the earth. Wet leaf smell wafts over her face with a gentle breeze, and sudden nostalgia wrenches her insides with incredible pressure. Home?

When she doesn’t answer, the flat of the blade presses against her throat harder.

“Who _are_ you?”

She reaches out for her connection with her soulmate, a reflexive habit whenever she became anxious or hurt or scared. The nothingness from inside the void answers her, and Sakura despairs because she has never felt such emptiness. Was Ino dead? _Am I dead?_

“Sakura.” Her voice creaks like it hasn’t been used in a thousand years. “My name is Sakura.”

“Your _purpose.”_

_Tsunade-sama, what is a medic’s purpose?_

_To live, to survive, to heal, to fix, to defend. And always to move forward, to advance the field._

Her purpose. Too deep of a question to pose to a lost woman with depleted chakra in a familiar forest surrounded by unfamiliar dark-haired men. But no, some of them almost looked like--?

“I’m a healer,” she says, hoping that if nothing else, they’d at least think her too valuable to kill. 

She’s right.

Her eyes and mind clear a bit and now she can see. There are three of them surrounding her in a protective triangle, weapons all drawn and pointed in. They all have dark hair and Sharingan eyes, and from their stances alone Sakura knows to be cautious. These are shinobi, and high ranking ones, dangerous enough to wield stolen Sharingan eyes. 

She reaches for the chakra in her Byakugo and doesn’t feel surprised when she comes up empty. At the end of the battle with Kaguya her seal hadn’t been depleted, but close, and the...journey to wherever she was now had apparently taken the rest. She isn’t helpless, but she’s close enough.

“We should take her to the council, my Lord” one of the men says. “Her sealwork alone will be invaluable in the fight against Uzushio. The mark on her forehead speaks of master’s work, and if she created the seals that transported her here…”

The man who demanded her identity, the one with the look of a leader about him, nods. “I agree. Fuyuki. Hirokazu.”

The two subordinates respond to his unspoken command and each form seals, and Sakura feels a sensation like a cold hand reaching down her back. She blacks out.

* * *

When she wakes up, she finds herself clean and reclothed in a cell. There is no space for embarrassment at the thought of being stripped and washed while unconscious. There are no bruises on her skin and no ache between her legs, so she knows that at least she wasn’t violated after being put under. Small mercies. 

Sakura pushes the worry aside in favor of standing up to assess her surroundings, hoping the simple act of accounting for space will help center her racing thoughts. 

The cell is small, maybe two by two meters, and made of stone. There is no window, so she doesn’t know what time of day it is, or even where she is in orientation to the earth. From the coolness of the air, she guesses underground. 

The bars in front of her are deceptively simple--too far apart, too rusted--and so she hovers a hand over them to test her suspicions. A subtle heat emanates from them, and she knows that if she touched them the hidden seals would unleash burns on her skin that would go down to the bone everywhere she made contact. Probably she would be burned if she tried to slip a hand between them, as well.

The walls have a similar fire-based chakra effect, but only that of an uncomfortable heat, to warn her to keep her distance. If she breaks through them, she expects they will burn her also. An old-fashioned technique to keep a person imprisoned, when simple chakra-dampening seals both keep the prisoner from escaping and eliminate the danger of their attacking captors.

Her hand tingles uncomfortably on the exact point where her soul mark rests and she can’t bear to look down at it, already knowing what she’ll see when she does, but it will have to happen sooner or later. She looks. 

On her palm there is nothing, no misshapen mark that matches Ino’s in every way and that once allowed her to feel Ino’s presence when the other girl was-- _is_ nearby. Looking at her palm feels a little like dying, and so Sakura closes her eyes and breathes deep. If she just keeps breathing, eventually she will calm down. Her knees decide to give out a bit but Sakura follows them down as gracefully as she can and hovers over the ground on hands and knees, continuing to breathe. 

If she just breathes, everything will be okay.

Breathing doesn’t work for shit, and five minutes later she throws herself back on the futon and sobs and sobs, clutching her naked fist to her chest in denial. 

It had to have been the work of Kaguya. That bitch. _That smile._

Had Kaguya manipulated the seals, or had she just known what was coming? In the split second that they’d wrapped around her and her vision had gone dark, Sakura caught a few characters on the winding inky threads: time, fling, obliterate, soul. Now, lying in the fetal position in a cage with her chakra still gone, Sakura thinks of the worst: those men had had Sharingan. 

In her exhausted state, she assumed the only thing she reasonably could, which was based on the information she knew: nearly all Uchiha-born Sharingan users had perished, so the eyes those men used had to have been stolen. Now, she isn’t so sure. 

_Where am I?_

Well, she certainly won’t find out with her head between her knees like this. Sakura stands up on shaky legs, takes another deep breath, and walks back to the front of the cell.

Peering carefully between the bars gives her no clues as to her location. She can see several other cells, all empty, and a wooden floor with paper walls. Two doors mark the end of the walkway between the cells and both are shut. There are no guards. It is a clear attempt at disorienting her, she thinks. Or perhaps their attention is drawn legitimately elsewhere.

Pondering this feels somewhat pointless, and so Sakura returns to the futon (dry-eyed this time) and enters the lotus position, focusing her excess chakra into her Byakygo. 

She ignores a burning feeling spreading across her upper back. A stress rash. It’ll go away in the morning. 

* * *

The next day, as near as she can tell without the window, the man who led the squad approaches her cage and nods at her. It isn’t a bow, but it’s an admission of cordiality. Sakura does not relax. Fresh from the agony of her journey, she hadn’t paid much attention to what they’d looked like, she’d just _noticed_. But with her head clear, it’s as plain as day that this man is the spitting image of Sasuke, and the resemblance sends a feeling like jumping into an iced-over pond all over her skin.

Sharingan. They’d all had Sharingan. And this man, who looked so much like Sasuke, must have had his own, for his eyes were black as anything today. Only an Uchiha could switch the Sharingan off again.

“Sakura,” he says. “Is that your real name?”

Sakura nods. “Yes, it is. Will you tell me yours?” She feels herself shaking a bit, unsure what she will do if he says what she thinks he might.

He smiles. “I’d like to ask you a few more questions first, if you don’t mind.”

Sakura nods again. She’d been preparing for this.

The man sits on the floor in a crossed-legs position, looking for all the world like a friend eager to catch up on goings-on. She stares at him, and at the easy smile on his face, and wonders what he could possibly want from her. From the way he begins his questioning, what he mostly wants is very boring answers to boring questions.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yes.”

“How is your back?”

_My--?_ “Uh, fine. It’s not sore if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I see. Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

Her answers are simple, not giving away more than is necessary, and she feels comforted by his apparent lack of care for this. It is absolutely imperative that she cooperate. The sooner he trusts her, the sooner she’ll be out of this prison, and then she can reorient herself and find her way back to Naruto, Sasuke, Kaka-sensei without needing to resort to anything drastic. All she needs is a moment to escape.

But then, his questions take a rather different turn.

“You were in quite a state when we found you,” he says. “Fighting a war, are you?”

Sakura makes a face. “Obviously,” she bites out. “Where have you been? Haven’t you noticed the strange things that have been happening? In the sky, it was--well, the sky went all red, and there was a genjutsu on...on the moon.” The man tilts his head, face completely blank. He doesn’t react either with recognition or confusion. “Maybe you weren’t near the fighting, but surely you encountered the Zetsu,” Sakura finishes.

He stares at her, but she senses something cautiously hidden behind the stoic facade. This isn’t the face of a man hearing the rambling of a brain-addled prisoner, but it also isn’t the face of a person who’s spent the last four days thinking the world might end. _What’s going on?_

“White men, they were all white men with green hair...everyone went to sleep. Please, don’t you know what I’m talking about? I’m Sakura, Haruno Sakura. I’m from the land of Fire.” She swallows hard, pressing her hands on the ground to quell the tremors. “You have to know about that, right? Don’t you know who I am?”

The man looks at her like she’s crazy, which is fair. For the past few days of fighting she’d felt slightly unhinged even at her best.

“Haruno Sakura,” the man says slowly. “You’re _in_ the land of Fire. My clan members and I found you near the border of our territory, at the edge of where the Senju forest begins.”

“But that’s not--surely you’d have seen--the whole country was overrun with--”

“Sakura,” he interrupts gently. “You’ve clearly been through many things. Considering the state you were in when the transportation seal dropped you at the border, I can’t imagine what you’ve been going through. But you need rest. The sky is not red, and there is not a genjutsu on the moon.” His face is devoid of deception, and her heart sinks like a pit into her stomach.

He asks her a few more simple questions, carefully avoiding any that would have her recount the manner in which she arrived. When he leaves, Sakura curls up into a ball on the futon and cries, again. The burning on her back is worse today.

* * *

He comes every day for a week (if she counts by meals), bearing her breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and always stays until she’s finished them all. The food does indeed remind her of Fire Country’s cuisine, but of the southwestern border, where tastes ran spicy and sour and sweet and strong, and the rice wasn’t rice at all but a type of wild grass that grows in flooded marshes.

The man is cordial to her, laughing and teasing at times, and she can’t help but relax around him as he reminds her a little of Naruto, whose ability to make a friend astounded her at times.

He still hasn’t told her his name, but she knows for certain this man is related to Sasuke. There’s something just so about the shape of his jawline and and the tilt to his eyebrows that couldn’t be from anywhere else. 

She asks him about his family, about where they’re from, but all she gets is vague answers politely nudging her to change the subject. She feels brave enough once to ask him directly about the Sharingan, but all he does is laugh and tell her that if she’s from the land of Fire she should know already. 

After a while she wonders if it’s his job to assess her mental state, because a suspiciously large portion of the questions relate to her emotional stability, ability to recall events, mood status, and some painfully obvious inquiries concerning her use of controlled substances. 

In fact, his questions aren’t intelligence-seeking at all, but sound rather like the same sorts of questions she asks hospital patients suffering from head trauma or psychosis. They’re questions you ask a person that you intend to release as soon as they’re stable. This baffles her more than she’d like to admit. What did they plan to do to her, these Uchiha?

None of the questions remotely mention the shinobi arts until the 22nd meal, upon which he requests to know her chakra affinities.

“Earth and water,” she answers easily, though to be honest she rarely uses elemental ninjutsu, preferring to rely on her yin and yang release for attacks and defense. 

“I see,” he responds, standing and setting his feet. “Would you mind doing a small demonstration? You see, there are members of my clan who would greatly like to meet you, and I’ve been asked to assess your proficiency in the shinobi arts.”

“And my sanity.”

“And that,” he agrees with a wry quirk to his lips. “You haven’t mentioned any more of this moon-based genjutsu, so I hope that means you’ve recovered from the disorientation the seal caused you.”

Sakura shrugs.

“Very well,” the man continues. “So with that, Haruno Sakura, would you please provide a demonstration of your abilities?”

Sakura gets an idea, and requests that he bring her something alive and injured. Anything would work, she says, animal or human, and he looks at her curiously but leaves. In his absence, Sakura takes a deep breath and slips into the child’s pose on the floor, centering her chakra in far too much preparation for a simple healing, but it certainly helped calm her nerves. 

There is something bothering her. Something wrong. She can’t quite point it out, but it is there, poking at her incessantly. He’d said she was _in_ the land of Fire. There’s always the possibility that he intends to disorient her and had lied, but something inside her says he was telling the truth back then. And what does that mean if he had? The seal had pulled her through space. Lots of space.

Had it truly pulled her through time as well? To a time when the Uchiha Clan still lived alone in their territory to the southwest, perpetually at war with the Senju? He’d mentioned the Senju forests. Uzushiogakure. No one talked-- _talks_ about the forests like that anymore. And Uzushio is--

It is all completely ridiculous. But with the things she’s seen lately, she feels fully prepared to believe it. The rabbit princess can turn humans to ash with a touch, so why can’t an ancient sealing technique throw a human sacrifice interdimensionally in order to power the sealing?

But she doesn’t believe anything, not yet. She needs to gather more evidence. Get out of this damn cell first. A demonstration of her healing abilities will almost certainly help with that. A good shinobi isn’t hard to find, but a good medical shinobi sure as hell is.

The man returns with a small kitten sporting an infected sore on its head. Easy to fix. It has a twisted back leg likely there from birth. Far less easy to fix, but kittens are small and biologically squishy and she’s feeling like showing off wouldn’t be a bad idea. Hands glowing green, she takes care of the infection in minutes and repairs the leg enough to splint it in two hours. 

When she finishes she’s a bit tired out, her reserves having not completely gone back to normal and her Byakugo still depleted, and the man is looking at her with an expression of pure awe.

“What _is_ that?” He gestures at her hands, the green fading silently into nothing.

“It’s chakra used for healing,” Sakura says, and then watches the man carefully. 

He betrays nothing of recognition and the awe only increases. “That’s incredible,” he breathes. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Sakura closes her eyes, refusing to fall into despair. Not yet. The unsettled feeling of _wrong wrong wrong_ begins to grow, bolstered by what she’d seen on the seals, but this is hardly an air-tight confirmation, she chides herself. There are plenty of rural areas that had never heard of--well, not in the land of Fire. But she still isn’t sure if--

“Please,” she speaks to the man, letting all the worry and stress seep into her voice. His head snaps up, away from the kitten he’d been watching roll about with four unmarred limbs, and his gaze connects squarely with her own. “Please, I want to get out of here. I don’t want to be kept in here.”

“I can help you,” she adds, gesturing to the kitten. Desperation claws at her belly.

The man approaches the bars and touches them with a single finger, making the sign for tiger with his other hand. She feels an odd shimmering in the air of heat and energy, and then the man opens the door.

“Haruno Sakura,” he says, “If it pleases you, the council of elders for my clan would like to meet you. The detention was a precaution, of course. I’m sure you understand.”

She holds her breath, hardly believing her luck and this man’s inexplicable trust in her.

“My name is Uchiha Izuna.”

* * *

Sakura begins to worry more intensely at the wrongness of it all as Izuna leads her out of the holding cells and into the light. After she squints the last bit of darkness from her eyes, she finds herself in the middle of an enormous domestic compound stretching in every direction for as far as she could see.

Stone houses with red clay rooftops line well-trodden dirt pathways, and everywhere she looks there are people bustling about. Two women in a house down the way put up laundry together, and in the space of an intersection five children tumble over one another in a mixture of tag and sparring. None of them could have been older than five but all have kunai in their hands.

But the people, and their questionable child-raising traditions, aren’t what stops her dead in her tracks just outside the cell block.

Red and white uchiwa fans emblazon banners and kimono and the backs of the children’s shirts. They decorate walls and paper lanterns on all the houses, and mark the barrier walls at steady intervals.

_What’s happening to me?_

Izuna leads her past the intersection and down a main thoroughfare, keeping a steady hand half an inch or so above her lower back, which she feels the pressure of every so often as she slows down to gawk at the next thing, and the next.

Izuna Uchiha...she knows that name, doesn’t she?

More anxieties push their way anxiously to the forefront, overwhelming her thoughts to the point where she barely looks where she’s going. He hadn’t asked her about any loyalties she holds, any family she has waiting for her, and no shinobi of his caliber would forget something so vital when interrogating a prisoner. In fact, her entire lock-up seemed like a farce, and she wonders if it had all been concocted to ensure her cooperation with medical ninjutsu.

Surely, she thinks, a clan would not trust an outsider around their children so soon without something hanging over their head. 

But here she is, being led through-- _the Uchiha Clan compound_ \--this man’s family compound, a man who claims the Uchiha and their Sharingan eyes, as though she poses no threat at all. He knows something, Sakura thinks, he just isn’t saying what.

When they arrive at the large central house, she lets herself be whisked in away from Izuna and into the hands of capable servants, who slip her out of her clean but plain clothing and into an elaborate kimono with a green base which she admires while being dressed. Bide your time, she tells herself. It isn’t time to run, not yet.

She enters the council room with little introduction and meets the grim faces of six elderly people all crouched on mats, and she sits on the lone empty mat at the center of the room. Behind the elders is a large black stone bowl at the center of which is a massive flame, and everywhere along the wall are uchiwa in various stages of antiquity. 

By now, it’s apparent to her that this family must be genuine, but before she accepts she’s been flung headlong through time she feels she needs something more convincing than some scenery. What that is, she doesn’t know.

The elders, in spite of their mood, are surprisingly unhostile and question her about her health, apologize for the necessity of keeping her caged for several days, and inquire after her ability to heal with chakra. It is only when they begin to question her soulbond status does Sakura feel a sense of gnawing horror, a ratlike terror in a darkened corner of a room filled with cats. The feeling makes her want to act out, to put herself out on the line to see what will bite her next.

“When I came through the seal,” Sakura says, and at this the elders lean forward as one, “my connection with my soulmate was severed. My soul mark is gone now, and--” Here her voice breaks, just a bit. “--as you see then, I have no soulmate.”

“You are wrong,” a deep, masculine voice cuts through the stillness of the room, silencing everything but the fire.

Uchiha Madara, very much alive and looking no older than thirty, steps into the room. The elders all immediately bow but Sakura’s back stiffens like a metal rod. Behind him she can see Izuna, changed into more formal attire. He nods encouragingly at Sakura but her eyes stay riveted on the wild-haired man in front of him.

Madara bows to her. Low, at the waist. Dryness overtakes her mouth completely. “Your name is Sakura. You came to this world from another, through a seal you had no part in making. You bring knowledge of healing chakra with you from a time beyond this one. In that place, the conspirator Zetsu succeeded in bringing about the end of the world. And your soulmate in this world,” Madara continues, “is me.”

He brings a hand up to his shoulder and presses his hand to his upper back. Burning chakra like dying embers overtakes her system until the invasion overwhelms her shaky reserves and she begins to black out. The last of Sakura’s doubt dies with her consciousness, and her last thought before her body hits the floor is _well, shit_.

* * *

  
  


She blames the fainting on exhaustion and lack of food, but the way Izuna looks at her when she wakes up in a bed--a much nicer one, in a much nicer room that wasn’t a cage at all--tell her that she needn’t waste her breath trying to save face.

“They know this is a shock to you,” Izuna consoles her. “Don’t be embarrassed.”

Since he feels in such a conciliatory mood, Sakura decides to grill him for the rest of the information she either hadn’t received or hadn’t thought to ask from her cell.

The year, which she hadn’t managed to glean in her cell without asking outright and creating more questions, puts her squarely in the years before Konoha’s founding. And with her request for this information comes a sort of understanding in Izuna’s eyes.

He tells her, when she presses, that they all knew very well she didn’t come from this time or maybe even this place, that when the seal spit her out its arrays still glowed on her skin for some time after, enough to mark them down when the servants cleaned her up. 

“It was very strange, and the sealwork was like nothing we’d seen. The writing was ancient, but parts of it weren’t, and those parts seemed to suggest some sort of dimensional displacement.”

To the surprise on her face, he adds that Sharingan users had long believed in the possibility of other realms that were and were not their own. Her coming here is merely confirmation of that belief. The elders, he says, are ecstatic to have her here, not only because her arrival confirms a generations-old prophecy and spiritual belief, but also that her presence means their clan heir has found his bondmate.

“His bond--?”

“Ah, you call them soulmates and soul marks. We simply use different terms.”

“But I can’t--” Sakura raises her arms and then lowers them helplessly. “What am I missing here?”

“Your back,” Izuna says, gesturing politely over her shoulder with his chin. “Haven’t you felt it?”

_The burning. Oh, no._

He leaves a few minutes later, begging off on some clan business, but Sakura knows it’s really to give her some privacy with her own skin. In the bathroom there is a full-length mirror, and she strips madly in front of it with little care for how the silks will take the dampness of the floor.

And there it is. On her upper back between her shoulder blades, is the thin black outline of a shape taking form into what looks like a bird in flight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've seen a lot of stuff floating around on the internet about people stressing over comments: what to write, how to come across, etc. If you want to comment on things but aren't sure what to say, feel free to take one of the following ideas:
> 
> 1\. Just--keyboard smash ;slkdfj;alskdfjsaldfkj  
> 2\. yes good  
> 3\. A gif [to do this, use the following html code: < img src="GIF.URL.GOES.HERE" > / if you go to giphy.com and find the gif, you want, go to "copy link" and then "gif link" and then paste that entire url where it says GIF.URL.GOES.HERE. Then make sure there are no spaces between anything (I have to put them here or else ao3 will think I'm trying to embed something). Now you know how to embed a gif as a comment!]  
> 4\. [dragging a character for being a dumb-ass]  
> 5\. [crowning a character for being a queen]
> 
> All kinds of comments are fun to get! When I'm too tired to words, I like to do the gif embedding. It's fun to find one that fits my mood or that I was reminded of while reading the chapter.


	2. what the sheeit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Izuna tells Sakura a story, Sakura tears shit up, and Madara pitches one (1) tent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please step politely around any plot holes you find and DO NOT PERCEIVE THEM. We are going to have a GOOD time here.
> 
> I think the idea of a subverted time travel fix-it is very sexy and fun. What if the place you go is pretty okay, actually?
> 
> Interior Blue Jay  
> 

She asks a servant to send Izuna a message to come back immediately. Izuna makes her wait several hours for a response, and when a servant finally does convey his message it’s to inform Sakura that actually, Izuna will be away for three days. Sakura spends the time stewing in her spite and refusing to eat any but the most basic of meals. 

Every so often, her new soulmark burns with that uncomfortable, fiery chakra. Now that she has time to meditate on it, she recognizes it as Madara’s own. Sakura is no sensor, but she recognizes the feel of his chakra from the final hours of the war; veritable _waves_ of chakra emanated from the furious, reanimated Madara from her time. This chakra lacks the tinge of anger, but it still burns with the strength of its owner’s most famous affinity.

In her boredom, Sakura begins to notice a pattern, that when she thinks about Madara, the soulmark heats up with that horrible chakra. The implications are disturbing, and she plans to ask Izuna about the mechanics of soulmarks in this world. 

It’s obvious enough that marks work differently here from the simple fact that she cannot feel Madara’s presence in the same way she used to feel Ino’s. Everything else is speculation. She meditates more often, both to refill her Byakugo and to keep her mind off of Madara. It works to lessen the flare-ups, but they don’t disappear.

Three days later, Izuna arrives as promised. His demeanor seems truly apologetic--“I thought you would have wanted more time alone, and so I left the compound on some minor business; I apologize”--but she can’t help but wonder if he ignored her purposefully, in some sort of power play. Uchiha are synonymous with spite in her mind, but that could just be her experience with Sasuke, Obito, and the other Madara talking.

“I have some questions, and you’d better answer them honestly,” she practically spits at him. Izuna gestures to a servant in a corner and a low table is brought out and cushions placed on the floor. Sakura sits. White circles appear on her knuckles from where she grips her knees.

“What questions do you have?” Izuna’s face is so calm, so understanding. She wants to reach across the table and punch him in the nose. 

Where to begin? She has _endless_ questions. “How does Madara know about me coming through the seal across time?”

The story Izuna tells is incredible. It’s the story of how the Uchiha Clan began. Not the Sharingan, but the _Clan_. It goes like this: a girl with burning red eyes saves a magical crow from a hunter’s net. This crow makes a promise to use its powers to help the girl and all her descendents in thanks for her service. One day, many years later, that First Crow has a vision of the future, which comes in the form of three dreams. 

In the first dream, a sickly white tree sinks carnivorous roots deep into the earth, and everyone who eats of its fruit becomes deceived by its whispering. In the second dream, a slug descends to earth from a collision between two great stars. In the third dream, two koi swim in perfect harmony until a shadow falls upon them and one of the koi darts away. The remaining koi sinks into the deep.

These dreams, Izuna explains, were studied for centuries to determine their meaning. Then, five hundred years ago, a crow acolyte at Amaterasu’s temple received a vision of a peculiar, plantlike man living in a cave and meddling with the world’s events. After this Zetsu--as he came to be known--was dispatched, the Uchiha knew that the first prophetic dream had come to pass and doubled down on interpreting the final two.

“Wait,” Sakura interrupts. “So Zetsu is gone? But...there’s more to it than just him.”

“Yes,” Izuna says. “The summoning statue for the biju, and the chakra tree. All of this became clear in time. The priests and priestesses at the temple meditated for months after the acolyte received their vision. Amaterasu lit the way forward.”

Sakura is stunned. Izuna continues his story.

The second dream puzzled the Uchiha because they did not know how it connected to the first, although the First Crow seemed certain that all three were related. Amaterasu had helped the Uchiha to determine the meaning of the first dream, but the second or third dream, it seemed, were not as vital to her interests.

“In traditional Uchiha lore, all crows have the gift of foresight, but the crows the clan contracts with are especially gifted in the art. The First Crow died of old age shortly after the interpretation of the second dream, but her descendents continue to serve our clan. Many of her children meditated on the final two dreams and determined the meaning of the second dream one hundred years ago. The crows said that a human would soon pass into this world from another, and that this person would have extraordinary abilities. 

“We surmised these abilities to be healing in nature, because of the association with slugs, but I was only able to confirm this when you showed me your healing chakra. The crows also told us that you would know of Zetsu, and that his dealings had destroyed your world.” Izuna pauses for a moment. “Please do stop me if any of this is too much.”

A feeling of bitterness spreads from her chest, mostly born out of her helpless ignorance. “What _don’t_ you know? Would you like to know my favorite color, or did the crows tell you that too? No, that wasn’t serious,” she adds when she sees Izuna begin to answer in earnest. “What about the third dream, then?”

“That one we haven’t figured out. Because it’s all connected, we imagine it must have something to do with you and Madara. Koi are associated with bondmarks and matrimony, you see.” Izuna smiles at her, and Sakura grits her teeth.

“So what, I’m supposed to just give up and marry your brother, I suppose? Maybe your birds didn’t tell you, but I didn’t exactly consent to being sent here. I am _not_ some mail-order bride that the universe shipped in.” She feels vindicated somewhat when Izuna’s smile slips back off of his face, but she hates his pitying look. She wants him to be angry.

“I know this isn’t what you want,” Izuna says as he stands to take his leave, “but you could at least give this world a chance. After all, you were given a new bondmark and your old one was taken away. Perhaps the universe is trying to tell you something.” 

_In the third dream, two koi swim in perfect harmony until a shadow falls upon them and one of the koi darts away. The remaining koi sinks into the deep._

Sakura buries herself in the covers after Izuna leaves. This act requires that she make some beleaguered member of the house staff prepare her futon at 3 in the afternoon. But if she’s going to mope, she’s going to do it properly, god damn it. And she’s figured out by now that she’s not allowed to do anything by herself but take a piss (barely). The servants keep looking at her with unfiltered expressions of awe, and it’s starting to get really fucking annoying.

So some creepy old bird knew she was coming, eh? And any chance she thought she’d had at leveraging her knowledge of Zetsu is now entirely shot. If she isn’t able to change the past for the better (if this even _was_ the past, and not an entirely new dimension, however that worked), then what the hell is the point of being here? All of her pain, her sufferings, the deaths of her friends...what is the _point?_ Her pain has no meaning here.

Even if she _is_ stuck here, the idea of playing house with that beast of a man disgusts her. It doesn’t matter that in this world, he hasn’t yet tried to kill the First and take over Konoha. He has the potential to, and that is that. Plus, she isn’t going to just abandon her _real_ soulmate just because the mark is gone. If she could figure a way back through the dimensional tear, it would reform. Sakura is sure of this.

A burn between her shoulders turns her mind towards _him,_ and she scowls even though no one can see it. 

* * *

“You are not happy here.” Izuna moves a pawn, though for what purpose Sakura is completely ignorant. As strategic as she is in a surgical suite, the subtle game of chess has always eluded her.

“Of course I’m not happy here,” Sakura snaps. She moves a knight, and glowers when Izuna gently corrects her piece into the proper, and more strategically sound, position. Why did knights move in L-shapes? “I got flung through time by a crazy lady…”

“Well, perhaps not by Kaguya directly. You have no conclusive evidence that this was a malicious action, as you have previously mentioned.” Izuna moves another pawn. His eyes haven’t left the board once.

“...I have been _allegedly_ flung through time by a crazy lady _,_ and I don’t even have anything to show for it. Kaguya is already defeated in this time, which means her minions aren’t around to influence politics. And you all already know everything about the Mangekyou and Rinnegan, apparently. You apparently _also_ knew I was going to arrive here from some stupid bird prophecy. And...and I lost my bond with my soulmate and I’ll never see her again.” 

She pauses here to catch her breath. She’s _fine_ . Everything will be fine. She won’t cry, not in front of Izuna. “And you think I should be _happy?_ You are out of your goddamn mind, Uchiha. I’m trapped here and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Sakura shoves her queen forward a bit more forcefully than usual.

When Izuna looks up at her, she only sees compassion and a bit of sorrow. “You aren’t trapped here, Sakura-san. You may leave the compound at your discretion. You know this.”

Sakura huffs. “I know. I mean I’m trapped in this whole...situation. This time, this place. And I can’t even use my knowledge to make it _purposeful_.”

Yesterday, she’d grown tired of waiting for Izuna and started walking east, just to test the limits of the Uchiha Clan’s hold on her. A few guards had walked with her for a while, but a crow had come to fetch them on Madara’s orders.

“Boss says to leave her alone,” the crow had said. “Let her go if she wants.”

So they’d stopped, and Sakura had kept going. The mark on her back had burned and burned. Breaking into a run, she’d made it as far as a small trading village miles away before turning around and going back. 

What was the _point_ ? There wasn’t anywhere to run _to._ The Uchiha, at least, were more of a known variable than anything else in this godforsaken land. And by letting her run, Madara had said loud and clear that it would be her decision to come back, though she is certain that if she truly ran, he’d come after her.

_He lets you run because he thinks you have no other choice but to come back,_ an angry little piece of her mind had supplied for her. And, well, it _is_ sort of correct. Sakura doesn’t know jack shit about this time’s economy, political state, treatment of shinobi, nothing. All she knows are the exaggerated tales of the Senju and Uchiha Clan’s rise to power. And even if she runs in earnest, staying away from other people, what then? Would she live like a witch in the woods, trading healing for scraps? And how long would it be then before another opportunistic clan snatched her up in order to monopolize or steal her abilities? At least she knows what the Uchiha _want_ from her.

The guards who’d followed her initial departure smiled and waved as she’d come back over the horizon. She’d sighed and waved back. None of this was their fault, and they were only being polite. Madara had been waiting at the front gate for her, somber, and when she’d passed him he’d followed her in for dinner. He did not mention her run for freedom. 

Sakura’s mind meanders back to the present, considering her next move. Izuna watches her dither with complete patience. 

“Do you think your knowledge is not purposeful? You brought with you your knowledge of healing, and according to the guards at the training grounds you’ve also brought terrifying feats of destruction. There is much you can contribute to this world,” Izuna says.

“But I went through _so much,”_ Sakura says. Her voice begins to shake, not with fear but with rage. “I went through _every_ thing and now none of it matters. I don’t even get to live in the peaceful world that I suffered for. All of that shit I went through has to mean something. If it doesn’t, I--why am I even here? Am I supposed to just give up and become some clan head’s wife, all because the universe _said_ so? 

“It’s not like I can even _try_ to go back to my world. I don’t know anything about space-time seals. No one _here_ knows anything about time-space seals but the Uzushio ninjas, and I know from the day you found me that you’ve been fighting with them.”

Izuna sighs. “That’s true.”

“Then I’m trapped. I almost wish something terrible would happen to this world so that I could save it. Thousands of people died in Kaguya’s war, Izuna. People I’ll probably never see again, not even their bodies in a mass grave. I don’t even know what happened to my team, and if they were really able to fix what Kaguka broke.” 

Sakura closes her eyes. “If...if something _bad_ happened here that I knew about ahead of time, and I fixed it, then...maybe I could be happy. All my life I’ve wanted people to need me. I worked to make myself stronger so that I could protect the people I love, but also because I wanted to feel needed. It feels _good_ when people need you. I know it’s selfish, but no one ever needed me before I became stronger. I’m not needed here, no matter what the prophecy says. I just _showed up_ and you’re all doing fine and I haven’t done _any_ thing to deserve the peace of mind I’m being offered. Not when for all I know all my friends and allies are suffering and dying without me there to heal them. I _can’t_ be happy here. It wouldn’t be fair to them. But sometimes I feel like putting it all behind me and making the best I can of this world. And that makes me feel worst of all.” 

Sakura pushes herself away from the low table and stands forcefully. A servant rushes forward to assist with god knows what and cowers at Sakura’s imperious look. Opening the doors on the far side of the bedroom reveals the tranquil tea-garden-style courtyard that Madara had proclaimed hers the moment she showed a spark of interest in it. 

Behind her, Izuna does not speak for a long time. The sun, already perched on the far wall of the garden, disappears behind it before Sakura moves to face him again. Izuna is solemn, and Sakura does feel a pang of regret, though she loathes every moment she waits for his reaction.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Sakura. No one should have to feel as though they must earn their happiness through strife. Shall we finish, or would you like me to take my leave?”

Anger burns through her like lava through a valley, slow and utterly destructive to everything in its path. She wants to tell Izuna to stay, so she can close her eyes and lean against him and pretend he’s anyone from her world. She wants to tell him to go fuck himself. But she’s not angry at him, she’s angry at...everything. And Izuna has been a beacon of kindness in this strange land. 

So she just tells him she’s tired, so quietly she can barely hear herself. He bows, departs, and the servants pack away the chessboard. Sakura mumbles an apology to the poor girl she frightened earlier, and the servant blushes deeply, insisting that Sakura had done no wrong.

Bathtime soothes some of her worries as it always does, and she’s gotten rather used to the feeling of someone else washing her hair. Surrounded by warmth and comfort, she thinks about her very first patient in Konoha. It was a four-year-old girl with an arm sprain, a trophy for having climbed a tree on a dare.

_“Hurting,” the little girl cries._

_“Where’s the hurting?” Sakura asks._

_“It’s everywhere now.”_

* * *

Madara insists on dining with her daily if he is on the compound, which she finds incredibly annoying. She tells herself she feels this way because Madara himself is annoying, but the real reason is because she’s starting to enjoy his company, and that feels wrong. In any case, there is no escaping his presence for her evening meal. Even if she begs off of the formal meals the family shares--

“I’m sick.”

“I’m on my period.”

“I’m at a delicate spot in my research.”

“I forgot.”

\--Madara finds a way into her quarters, and she is given early warning by a pair of servants who set up a low table with tea and snacks. Her favorites, every time. She doesn’t want to dwell on why that pisses her off so much, that he knows she likes red bean mochi. It’s childish and she knows it.

He makes conversation with her that sounds perfectly cordial, but she believes with petty certainty that his doting attention is all a ploy to get her to submit to him body and soul. She’s taken to making up wild stories about her childhood in Konoha, and while at the beginning she’d tried to do the thing properly--make up lies close enough to the truth that she could remember them--lately her irritation has provoked several fanciful stories that even Naruto wouldn’t have believed.

Her latest lie has to do with the concept of soulmates in her world. _What is it like there for you?_ he’d asked her once. She knew the Uchiha celebrated the discovery of one’s soulmate, because Sasuke had mentioned it once. Consequently, Sakura’s continued reluctance to consummate her bond with Madara through marriage had shocked and scandalized the entire Clan. 

Madara had made some faulty assumptions from her surly behavior that she sometimes encouraged, for fun and also a bit of spite. The conversations haven’t been entirely pointless, though. She’s confirmed once and for all her suspicion that the burn of Madara’s chakra occurs whenever he thinks of her. The stronger the burn, the more intensely he was thinking.

“Do all the people in your country consider finding one’s bondmate to be such a trial?” he asks her tonight, after she informs him that yes, she is still miserable, for the _hundredth_ time. His gaze is intense and unyielding; even when their conversations get uncomfortably tense, he refuses to look away first. Stubborn. Competitive. Just like her, though she’ll never admit it.

“Sometimes.” Sakura counts the strokes of the servant’s comb through her hair, remembering Ino and the way she always combed both of their hair before bed. She moves her chakra in the direction where her mark used to be and feels nothing; even the feeling of emptiness has faded completely. _Hurts, hurts, hurts. Everywhere hurts._

“Sometimes,” she says, “we throw a living wake for the person who finds their soulmate, to acknowledge their loss of independence and personal identity. It’s tragic, really. Sometimes, if someone _really_ important finds their soulmate, the whole country just takes the day off to be sad and get drunk together.”

He smiles, a small thing as hard as the man who shows it. “And do all the people in your country concoct such terrible lies, for unknown and nefarious purposes?”

“I wouldn’t say my purpose is nefarious,” Sakura snapped. “Sometimes in my country people are sarcastic when they’re sick of looking at their soulmate’s face and want to be alone for a while.”

He laughs then, a genuine laugh that crinkles the edges of his eyes, and it catches her off guard for a moment because he _never_ laughs. It must have shown in her face, because he looks smug when he settles and she knows without looking in a mirror that her face has gone all red. _Shit._

He stands from the low table, taking his cup of sake with him, and bows his head to her. Sakura wonders what he’s playing at, wondering so intensely that she forgets to recoil backward as he approaches her. She feels a bit rabbit-like for a moment, completely towered over by this giant of a man with his wild hair, but he only dips down to press his lips against the top of her head for one, two seconds. Then, he pulls back and leaves without another word.

What a strange man, Sakura thinks. 

* * *

  
  


A month later, she seeks out Madara of her own accord. He’s been coming to visit her every day for a couple hours, but the time they spend together is still awkward. She is distant, overly polite to avoid being snippy, and angry. He is frustrated with her, assertive, and angry. Her coldness and his heat combine into a volatile mix that has required Izuna’s intervention three times already.

She _knows_ this Madara isn’t the one from her time, but it’s so damn hard to look this man in the face and see anything other than a monster. Madara himself knows she thinks he looks like a monster, because on the twenty-ninth day of her reticence he’d lost his temper and asked for an explanation of her behavior. And she’d told him, plainly, what that other Madara had become.

He’d scoffed, dismissing the actions of his doppelganger with a wave of his hand. 

“I take no responsibility for that man’s actions,” he said simply. “Izuna is alive, and Kaguya is not. I see no purpose in clinging to a past that never was.”

Then it had been Sakura’s turn to scoff. Asking her to sweep away years of trauma belittled her emotions. She knows _logically_ that this Madara had nothing to do with the pain she’d brought here, but her emotions do not know this. It would take time for her to adjust to her situation. 

And Madara, completely sure of his eventual victory over her hesitation, completely sure that one day she would wake up and be his doting mate, had nodded and said she could take all the time she needed. Then he’d had the audacity to be shocked when she threw her teacup at him.

Today, she is seeking him out to gather more information. Surely there is _something_ she knows from her time that will prevent some catastrophe. The Uchiha library in the main house is where she finds him, sitting next to Izuna, both of them pouring over a scroll on sealwork. He looks up, surprised, when she enters. The flying bird on her back burns. Izuna makes a polite excuse and retreats farther into the library’s interior, out of sight.

“What do you need? Is something wrong?” Madara sets the scroll aside, providing her with his full attention.

She raises an eyebrow. “Does something have to be wrong for me to want to find you?”

Madara stands and motions for her to follow him through the stacks to a hidden interior sculpture garden. This one is full of rocks carved with crows of varying levels of stylization, and is open to the elements by virtue of a circular opening in the ceiling. Sakura wonders whose job it is to clean up after the elements. 

A few crows perch on the branches of an iron tree at the center of the garden. The crows are the only bits of this garden that are alive; everything else is stone and metal. Sakura identifies these crows as wild; they are intelligent, but incapable of speech or chakra manipulation and cannot be summoned by a human. 

Izuna had explained to Sakura the method of discernment on her third day in the new room. Descendents of the First Crow had white-tipped wings, and red bands on their tails. Or, Izuna had said with a smile, she could just ask the crow for its name if she wasn’t sure. If it answered her, it was a Clan crow. 

Madara sits down on a bench, and after a moment of hesitation Sakura sits on a separate bench that runs perpendicular. “The interruption is not unwelcome,” he says. “But surely you must understand why I made the assumption. You’ve given me a _strong_ impression over the past month that you do not desire my attention. And given that my last visit ended with you covered in tea--very expensive tea, might I add, on very expensive clothing, which I paid for--I had planned to “give you some space,” as my brother suggested.”

Inside her kimono sleeve, Sakura balls her hands into fists and thinks about punching a hole through Madara’s head. She does _not_ think about how easy it had been for him to dodge her thrown teacup yesterday. Nor does she reflect on how gracefully he’d sent the water back in her direction with a small wind jutsu.

She decides to ignore his attitude for now. If he wants to be passive aggressive, then fuck ‘im.

“I want to ask you some things about the Senju,” Sakura says. This, she thinks to herself, _must_ be something she can influence. If Konoha hasn’t been created then the Uchiha and Senju are still at odds, and through her foresight she can give them enough reasons to put down their weapons and make nice. 

It was Izuna’s death that prompted the end of the fighting last time, she recalls. When she first remembered this, it seemed natural to wait for the event to happen, heal Izuna, and then move on from there. 

But then she thought, why wait? Surely she could provide ample reason to end the fighting now. Though, she does think it is odd that no one in the clan compound ever _talks_ about the war with the Senju. And it is _also_ odd that when she’d mentioned Izuna’s death to Madara that Madara seemed surprised a Senju had killed his brother. It doesn’t fit. But the Uchiha Clan _must_ be at war with the Senju. After all, if the Uchiha are having trouble with the seal-masters in Uzushio, then surely they are also at odds with Uzushio’s staunchest ally, the Senju Clan. 

Madara does not question her abrupt change in topic. Perhaps he’s glad she’s not biting his head off for once. “Ask.”

“Are the Uchiha at war with the Senju?”

“No. We have had skirmishes in the past, but I have chosen to continue the path of mediation set upon by my forefathers. Five generations ago the Uchiha signed a treaty with the Senju to divide up battle contracts on neutral ground. A monastery in the center of Fire Country helps determine which clan gets which contract, in order to fairly balance each clan’s finances and power according to relative need.”

Sakura grits her teeth. “I see. What about the fighting with Uzushio?”

Madara shrugs. “Irrelevant to our relationship with the Senju. Uzushio is attempting to wrest control of the southern coast from us, even though such a move is foolish given their numbers. Their troops would be spread out far too thin to be effective at such a distance from their home village. The Uzumaki Clan and their vassals are actually also in conflict with the Senju Clan, for separate reasons.” 

Great. Now she’d have to find a way to pull _Uzushio_ into peace talks to have any hope of researching their time-space techniques. Sakura knows next to nothing of Konoha’s old sister village, destroyed by sea and flame before she was ever born. “And what about Konohagakure? In his childhood, the other Madara made a plan with Lord Hashirama to form a joint military village that would unite the clans.”

Madara shakes his head. He knew about Konoha. She’d told Izuna about it some time in the first week, and then he’d told his brother, who asked about it that night at dinner. “Hashirama and I never had such a discussion. My relationship with him is cordial, but we are not friends. However, I have spent some time lately thinking about the idea of a village. The Uchiha and the Senju are prosperous and happy, but the rest of the country is embroiled in petty conflict between smaller clans, the Uzushio conflict being one such example. A village centered around the monastery and its ideology would go a long way towards promoting regional stability.”

A blue jay flutters down through the skylight and lands on the tree next to the crows. The tips of its wings are white, and there are red bands on its tail. With intelligent eyes, it watches Sakura and sees far more than she wants it to.

“That’s...good,” Sakura says. “I know a lot about the way Konoha was run on a day to day basis. Maybe I can help with forming the initial peace.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Madara says. “We may not have a formal alliance with the Senju, but we are formally at peace. And the monks have already finished the first draft of the village charter. I went to the monastery two weeks ago to meet with Hashirama and discuss plans. We don’t have the bitter history that our clans did in your world, so coming to an agreement was rather simple. Besides, it may be for the best that you not get involved. Your Konoha was founded on bad blood, and I wouldn’t want any of that to make its way into our village, intentionally or not.”

“Okay,” Sakura says. She leaves the room without saying goodbye and doesn’t stop walking until she gets to the training ground farthest away from the main house. A guard follows her, curious, as does the blue jay from the metal garden. 

Stripping off her _expensive_ daywear, she falls into fighting stance and spends the next hour making the training ground look like the site of a massive natural disaster. The guard wears a mixed expression of awe and terror on his face. All of the guards learned by the second week not to underestimate her power; one unfortunate consequence of this respect was that none of them would spar with her anymore.

Spent, sweaty, and panting, she looks up at the blue jay circling overhead, watching her with its creepy little eyes.

“What do you want?” She yells up at it.

“Nothing,” it says. “Just watching. You’re interesting.” The blue jay flies away. Sakura follows it with her eyes until it disappears.

* * *

  
  


“I have been told,” Madara says to her at dinner that evening in her room, “that my comment to you earlier about not needing your help may have been...discourteous. I want you to know it was not my intention to brush you aside. I merely...thought it would take your mind off of things, not to be involved, and that assumption was inappropriate to make. I apologize for causing offense. My brother and I would welcome your help in the days and weeks ahead.”

Sakura imagines Izuna--a still surface hiding deadly powerful currents--cornering his brother in the library for a scolding and she hides a smile behind her sleeve. Pouting isn’t a word she would ever use to describe someone like Madara, but he looks _flustered_ , and for this she decides to humor him. She nods and thanks him for the apology, and some of the tension in his shoulders melts away.

And then, he does something she’s _never_ seen from him before.

“Hirokazu took me to the training ground you destroyed,” Madara continues. He breaks eye contact with her--he _actually breaks eye contact_ \--and stares down at his plate. If he were anyone else, she’d describe his current demeanor as _submissive_. But this is Madara, and calling him submissive would be bat shit crazy. He clears his throat. “I...haven’t seen a battleground so obliterated since the last time I saw Hashirama fight. You aren’t a mokuton user, are you?” 

Sakura blinks at her soulmate. The abrupt change in topic isn’t like him either; Madara tends to cling doggedly to a line of conversation until he’s beaten everything out of it that he can. Sakura’s tendency to bounce suddenly to different ideas often frustrates him. 

What’s even _less_ like him is the barest hint of red appearing at the tops of his ears. She feels her soulmark burn with the feel of his chakra, but it’s nothing compared to the burn in his eyes. He looks... _interested_. 

Sakura sets her chopsticks down, clears her throat, and recites her sensei’s introduction to pinpoint chakra release from memory. Madara hangs on her every word, enthralled, and when she crumbles a rock from the tea garden by way of example, he stares at her hands for a very long time.

Sakura makes a point to go to the library tomorrow and research this time period’s methods for birth control. 

Just in case. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have decided that I do not desire sexually dominant men in this het pairing. Not my yum. Miss me with that. This Madara wants Sakura to break him the fuck in half and that's just how it is okay. She's going to RUIN him and he is going to LIKE it. 
> 
> After some angst happens. You always gotta have the angst first. You know how it is. If it's not the angst it's the one bed or the coffeeshop or the tender hand on the face that slowly falls away as both character simultaneously realize their feelings for one another. It's the LAW.
> 
> And you all did GREAT at commenting please show me that AGAIN. Snaps for you absolute units with that comment on every chapter energy even if the comments just turn into "asldkfjlas" after a while I FEEL YOU I do the SAME THING.
> 
> Here are MORE IDEAS for comments if you can't think of something.
> 
> 1\. [a quote from the chapter] [that gif of Oprah slowly closing the book]  
> 2\. tell me how much I am hurting you with my words  
> 3\. Tell me what we should name the ANNOYING BLUE JAY SIDEKICK  
> 4\. guess the NEXT CHAPTER TITLE  
> 5\. tell me what part of Naruto canon you think is the most indicative of the creator's lack of interest in continuity; like what moment can you pinpoint as the part when he stopped giving a shit


	3. what the fuq

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura gets lost on the road of life, there are too many birds, and Madara removes his shirt off-screen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In order to experience this crowning achievement of American Literature(tm) FULLY and COMPLETELY you must listen to the music that filled my mind-hole while I wrote it. Please find ["He 10 Hours”](https://youtu.be/3SCBYUE_X1U) on YouTube and listen to that while you read this chapter so that you may APPROPRIATELY enjoy this Content.

It’s a few months later now and things are moving quickly. She still hasn’t married Madara _or_ slept with him but the Uchiha Clan doesn’t seem to give a shit about this. In fact, they don’t give a shit about a _lot_ of things. For a while she’d just thought it was Izuna, but it’s _everyone_. Sakura is utterly baffled by the clan’s cheerful apathy. Quite _un_ like the Uchiha Clan of her time, _this_ Uchiha Clan is content to float along on the currents of fate--or fly, rather.

But the Uchiha aren’t your stereotypical, go-with-the-flow hippies sitting by the river telling quaint wisdoms to passersby; oh, no. The Uchiha Clan do not give a shit... _aggressively._ Everywhere Sakura looks, she sees Uchihas and birds arguing about the various and sundry ways a person might endeavor not to give a shit. She has learned there are _so many ways_ not to give a shit. 

After observing a great number of debates, formal and informal, Sakura musters the courage to confront an elder directly. She wants to know once and for all why no one seems to care what she chooses to do. Why they went through all the trouble of caging her only to let her suddenly, terrifyingly free. 

The imprisonment, the elder says, is easy to explain. People with connections to crow dreams tend to be the shady type. It was for the Clan’s safety that Izuna interrogated Sakura carefully over a span of days. Her status as soulbond had only made the Clan wary. If she’d known about Madara too soon, who knew _what_ havoc she could have caused? Who knew what ultimatums she might have given? Not giving a shit did _not_ extend to the immediate protection of the Clan’s personal safety from interlopers. 

“As for the rest,” the elder says, “ _that_ bit is more complicated. In short, while we are pleased that you arrived, of course--oh, how shall I put this--our happiness has less to do with a desire to...puppeteer the machinations of fate and more to do with the satisfaction of having been correct. That Elder Gota lost a bet with me. _He_ thought you’d be blonde. Idiot.”

Consequently, the elder continues, whatever Sakura decided to do now was up to Sakura and Sakura alone. The Elders were pretty sure that she played a role in the third prophecy, but the mystery of the prophecy’s _true_ meaning--if it had a True Meaning at all--was not a matter of grave importance. Whatever was going to happen would happen, regardless of any meddling. 

After all, another one of the clan elders tells her in the courtyard, the second prophecy just _implied_ she’d show up. The symbolism of the koi in the third prophecy was and is hotly debated, but the Uchiha, the elder says, debate more for the love of arguing than to determine objectivity.

“It didn’t mention _anything_ about marriage. And the association of koi with bondmarks and marriage is coincidental. People see what they want to see. For all we know, it’s a sign that we should invest more time and money in the coastal fishing industry. That Izuna is a romantic sap,” the elder says, affectionately. 

* * *

The older members of the clan often congregate under the largest tree in the courtyard, seeking refuge from Fire Country’s heat underneath the magnificent branches. Corvids perch everywhere in the boughs, and here and there Sakura spies a flash of white and red. 

The birds’ influence on the Uchiha is compelling. Sakura’s been doing some more reading on Uchiha history in the clan libraries, and Sakura thinks the clan motto should be Shit Happens for all they’ve completely adopted the crows’ unconcerned philosophies. Not _all_ clan members subscribe to the crows’ way of thinking, of course, and Sakura is hard-pressed to find any two humans _or_ birds who agree on more than one point. Nevertheless, there’s an overall feel in the air of blissful detachment. 

Sakura is unsure where she is to fit in all of this. They--the Uchiha...and the crows--watch Sakura’s comings and goings with intense interest, but other than some self-interested suggestions no one makes any demands on how she spends her time.

Privately, Sakura thinks that most of the clan wants her to stick around just for the free medical treatment and strength training. The Clan remains appropriately awed by her strength and skills, so Sakura cannot complain they lack appreciation. But there are days she wishes someone would come and tell her what her new purpose in life should be. Going from a tightly controlled environment and a personal history of failure to...this...is daunting.

Eventually, she’d established a clinic on the outskirts of their territory. She’d also acquired a few medical students and ass-kicking apprentices from the Uchiha and their vassal clans, so it’s clear to all that she’s chosen to put down roots. 

Over time, Sakura’s roots have grown as deep as the Clan’s faith in her predictability. No one bats an eye anymore when she leaves the compound, whether it’s for business or pleasure. She’s run off to that little border town so many times that most of its denizens know her name; they start asking her to take packages on her way back. 

Embarrassing. She still takes the packages, though. It’s something to do, and it’s nice to feel needed.

Still, the continuous lack of external pressure hinders Sakura’s attempts to find her place here. No one shows up on her new doorstep and demands she account for herself. No one makes fun of her hair, or of the fact that she wakes up early to put on makeup. No one makes snide comments at her which include the pejorative foundation “how the hell could a girl like you--.” Sakura is just...there. 

Gratuitous. Baseless. Extant. 

So she makes herself useful, as useful as she knows how to be on her own (it isn’t much), and she tries to ignore the fact that she’s drifting.

* * *

Madara invites Sakura on a trip to the monastery so that she can see for herself how the peace talks with the Uzumaki Clan are getting along. She sits across the table from Mito Fucking Uzumaki and imagines multiple scenarios in which the other woman slams her against a wall and demands, _sexily_ , what Sakura thinks she’s doing here.

During one of the meeting breaks, Sakura walks right up to Mito and asks her what the Uzumaki clan knows about powerful space-time seals. This is a normal way for anyone to begin their first conversation with a stranger.

“Oh yes,” Mito says. She folds her hands in her lap and gives Sakura her full attention. “The Uchiha’s brother mentioned you at the last meeting. While the Uchiha and Uzumaki are not _currently_ at a diplomatic state in which trading high level techniques would be appropriate, I will tell you this: your search is all but futile. 

“When your bond was severed, you lost all connection to the world from which you came. Without that tether, a dimensional seal would lack direction and focus. It would send you anywhere: to your world, perhaps, but far more likely the countless other worlds between here and there.”

“Oh,” Sakura says. “Great.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Well, I could still find some way of helping people here, I suppose. Have you invented the--yes you have; it’s on your forehead. That’s...so good. Really, it’s great.” 

* * *

The blue jay that keeps following her around has a name: Cunning. She earned this name, some say, after tricking some minor god into bestowing her with enormous strength. And intelligence. And beauty.

The “some” of some say is Cunning herself.

She isn’t lying about the gifts, though. Despite her small size, she can haul a human adult through the air with ease. 

Cunning mostly uses this power to play tricks on other people and to badger Sakura for attention. It’s hard to ignore Cunning even at the _best_ of times, much less when she’s threatening to carry away your personal belongings if you won’t answer her annoying questions.

Today, Sakura is lying spread eagle on the floor of her bedroom. Everyone in the clan is healthy and no one needs anything smashed, so now she is useless. She stares at the ceiling and tries to recall the exact shade of Ino’s hair, leaning into her guilty forgetfulness as punishment for looking at Madara’s ass earlier this morning. 

She _can’t_ be happy here. It isn’t right. And letting herself get horny for Madara is morally, ethically, and mentally unwise. Even if she never sees Ino again, Sakura can’t bear the thought of moving on. It’s hard to explain, but she doesn’t feel as though she’s _earned_ it. 

Most everyone she lost in the Other Place died viscerally and more or less in front of her. Their deaths were tangible, and meaningful, and _real._ They meant something because they provided context for her life, and justified her choices. Sakura has built up her house on a foundation of pain, and she cannot bear to live in this place where there is no pain. 

Here, people respect her abilities as much as they’d respect any _other_ powerful stranger who’d dropped in out of the fucking sky. Their respect is not tinged with cynicism because they knew her when she was weak, nor is their respect conditional on Sakura’s ability to overcome their low expectations of her. No one is telling her she’s weak, she’s useless, that she _can’t,_ so how is she supposed to know what she should do with herself?

In an effort to keep Cunning from destroying the furniture, Sakura attempts to explain her current mood. It’s very hard to defend a life run on spite to someone born self-assured. 

Cunning does not under _stand_ that in order for Sakura to get truly motivated, she needs to be told she _can’t_ do the thing so that when she _does_ do the thing she’ll prove the naysayer wrong and conse _quent_ ly prove that her existence has value. Cunning does not understand that as much as Sakura resents the life she’s lived, Sakura _needs_ that platform of shame and disappointment, because without it her entire integrity will crumble. 

“So let me get this straight. You want someone to...tell you that you _can’t_ do things, so that you _can_ do things. And then that will make you feel...better. Because they told you...that you can’t do things.”

“Well when you say it like _that_ it sounds stupid.”

“You said it, not me.”

“Well then, smartass, what’s so bad about wanting to prove people wrong about me?”

“Nothing. It’s just that it seems like you’ve built up your whole personality around what other people think about you. So now that you’re in a place where people _aren’t_ telling you that you’re weak or useless, you feel unfulfilled. You never bothered to think about why _you_ wanted to do those things.”

“Spite got me a hell of a lot further in life than being a doormat.”

“Ah, yes. The two personalities. Spiteful and doormat.” Cunning flies to the vanity, picks up a jeweled hairpin that Madara left for Sakura one evening, and cheerfully tosses it across the room.

“Oh my god,” Sakura says. She rolls over and presses her cheek against the floor; if she can’t escape Cunning’s antics, she just won’t look at them. “What do you _want?_ I am _trying_ to wallow in despair.”

“As a blue jay, I respect your talent for dramatic flailing. As your potential best friend, I am here to interrupt your spiral into depression by giving you some perspective: you place too much significance on others’ opinions of you and you treat those opinions like goals that are possible to reach. Said opinions have been, in the past, concerned with your “usefulness” to others. 

“But the things you used to fight against and the people you were useful to aren’t here anymore, and now you feel like you’re drowning because you never stopped and thought about what _you_ wanted your life to mean in the _absence_ of that context.”

Sakura glares at the bird for several minutes. Stupid birds. Stupid Uchiha and their stupid fuck-it lifestyle. “Stop using your weird crow mind powers on me. That’s really fucked up, okay? And how the hell do you know what depression is? It hasn’t been invented yet.”

“I don’t need to use creepy mind powers to tell you’re struggling and find out why. I just need eyes and the ability to find and read your journal, which you hide in very obvious places.”

Sakura glances over at the dresser. She hadn’t noticed in all the other Cunning-caused chaos, but the drawer containing her journal has been dumped out on the floor, her journal open and tatty from Cunning’s talons. The blue jay hops deftly out of the way to dodge Sakura’s thrown hairbrush.

“And you should know that depression was invented a _long_ time ago. It’s your word and description of it that’s new. Fun fact: I also learned _that_ from your journal!”

“Get out of here you technicolor, nosy-ass bitch!”

* * *

Sakura decides she really needs a hobby.

An explosion rocks the compound and she’s running towards the sound without thinking, hands already glowing green in anticipation of the coming tragedy. She rounds a corner and stumbles into an innocent lesson on some of the more unstable fire jutsu in the Uchiha playbook.

Fifteen wide-eyed children stare at her like she’s a crazy person, and the middle aged man leading the lesson calmly inquires if Sakura is in need of help. There’s that little hesitation before the word “help” _just_ in case Sakura wasn’t sure exactly the kind of “help” he thinks she needs.

She stomps her way back across the compound into the library where one of the council elders is leading an embroidery circle. Sakura picks up one of the blank spare frames, grabs a needle and thread, and starts stabbing away.

She keeps at her embroidery for hours until she’s sure standing up won’t result in an embarrassing panic attack. Madara collects her there for dinner and doesn’t mention the incident, but Sakura knows that he knows. He comments on her embroidery instead, admiring the various colors of red Sakura had chosen to represent her feelings. 

There was a time, Sakura thinks, where she would have felt relieved by his politeness. It would mean less opportunities to be vulnerable. Instead, she feels put out, though she can hardly blame the man for sidestepping. In the past, Sakura had often reacted poorly to his questioning; he’d adjusted accordingly, as any sane person might do. 

Conversation topics between them these days tend to be safer, less exploratory. And after that one heated moment between them, he hasn’t made so much as a twitch in her direction indicating further interest. Eating bitter herbs for weeks in an attempt to make a serviceable contraceptive now feels like unnecessary sacrifice.

When he leaves her for the evening, she sits in the garden while the servants make up her bed, feeling wistful. She wonders if she is _allowed_ to be sad that Madara has become more distant. And even if she was allowed, Sakura is too proud to fix things by admitting to Madara’s face that she enjoys his company. 

And she _does_ truly enjoy his company. He is engaging, intelligent, and most importantly she’s now been here long enough that the memories of that old Madara have settled completely in the back of her mind. 

At last, Sakura is able to see this Madara for his own sake. Echoes of what he could become run over and through him, but without his strength, stubbornness, and idealism, he wouldn’t _be_ Madara. Even when his arrogance gets the best of him, he isn’t afraid to admit his wrongdoings; when he oversteps, he checks himself. His behavior is consistent, predictable. Within the confines of this assurance, Sakura finds that his assertiveness becomes refreshing rather than disquieting. 

Loneliness creeps up on Sakura, laying cold fingers across her skin and driving her forward. Whatever she feels she has or has not earned here, she cannot go on like this.

* * *

Another month passes, and Sakura thinks she’s finally ready to let Ino go. The shrine is Cunning’s idea, and once Sakura gives her the go-ahead the jay spends most of a day s̶t̶e̶a̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ finding items to place on the shrine in lieu of a photo. Because Ino is not dead--as far as Sakura knows--this shrine is in memory of their relationship and not of Ino’s life. 

An oddly-shaped river rock is the center of the shrine, which Sakura sets up in the corner of her tea garden. Tall grasses hide the rock to the unobservant. If the wrong person found this at the wrong time, they might get the wrong idea and make a Thing about it. Sakura doesn’t want the Ino Rock to become a Thing. And Sakura certainly doesn’t want people to get dismal and feel sorry for her. 

Ino’s rock is a celebration of memory, for as long as Sakura remembers. It is not a spectacle of death. Ino isn’t someone Sakura wants to memorialize and place in the family temple, so full of ghosts and heavy with loss and deference and tradition. 

Ino was a ray of light and reminded Sakura of growing things, and so her shrine will live in the garden and be grown upon by creeping vines, crept upon by tiny creatures. Sakura paints a red band around one end of the rock: a ribbon of color that will last far longer than the cloth ribbon that disintegrated years ago.

No one has invented Ino’s favorite shitty beer yet, so Sakura places a bottle of one of the aunties’ bathtub gin concoctions in memory of the drunken times they had together. Eventually, Madara ventures into the garden to find Sakura, and he sits on a bench next to where Sakura kneels and picks away at imaginary blemishes on the river rock’s surface.

He inhales and Sakura tenses, prepared for criticism or a remark on her wistfulness, but he surprises her with grace. Her surprise shames her, because even the times when she snapped at him or shied away from his honest affection, he _never_ retaliated with resentment.

Madara, carefully, asks Sakura to tell him everything she loves about Ino. 

And Sakura, smiling, tells him.

* * *

It’s been a year now. Sakura’s been here long enough that she wonders if maybe the crows are onto something with their “shit happens” philosophy. Thinking her life didn’t matter had only made her miserable back home... _but_ perhaps the difference between that apathy and a more constructive apathy is the follow-through. 

She’d got the “my life is worthless” part down like a champion, but from there she’d only rolled around in self-pity. What she is missing, Sakura thinks, is the “and what” train of thought. 

“My life is worthless, and…? Something should _go_ there, Cunning.” Sakura chews on her dango stick and squints off in the distance. She is sitting in the highest branch of the tallest tree in the compound, a perch offering an exclusive vantage point overlooking Madara’s favorite training ground. 

Madara is training with his brother. Both of them have their shirts off, and the shameful guilt filling Sakura’s body is almost arousing for all she’d begun to associate shameful guilt with man titty. 

“Personally, I don’t see the point in acknowledging your life has no meaning and then immediately trying to insert meaning into it,” Cunning says. “That doesn’t mean you should just give up and die, obviously. You can still do things that make you happy. But not everything has to have _meaning._ The harder you try to find meaning, the more frustrated you’ll get.”

Sakura puts her head in her hands. “That’s completely exhausting. And I was always told that getting frustrated means you’re on to something that you haven’t figured out yet.”

Cunning approximates a shrug with one of her wings. “Again, you insist that somewhere out there are Facts just waiting for you to stumble across them. What you should be thinking about is the fact that losing your old life has only highlighted the inanity of it all. If the truths you believed then do not apply now, then they were not truths at all, were they?”

Sakura looks back up. Great clouds of dust begin to settle on the training grounds, marking the end of the brothers’ spar.

“Hold that thought,” Sakura says. “I’m going to insert some meaning into my relationship with my soulmate, and I’m going to do that right now.”

“Oh boy,” Cunning says. “This’ll be entertaining.” She takes flight in a flash of blue, rising above the trees into a lazy holding pattern.

Every day, Madara and his brother take the same path back to the main compound from the training grounds, and that path goes right underneath Sakura’s tree. As the two brothers pass by, both of them look up, spotting Sakura’s flashy hair and outfit easily among the green of the leaves. Izuna waves politely, says something to Madara that Sakura can’t hear, and continues walking down the path without his brother in tow. 

Madara just...stares up at her. Waiting. It feels like a challenge, or maybe Sakura just needs it to be one today. She needs the courage.

Solid wooden thumps reverberate throughout the forest as Sakura jumps her way down, conserving her chakra expertly though there’s little need in the safety of these lands. She holds a hand out to Madara, who accepts the offering of peace for what it is and encloses her hand with his own. 

Things have been a little easier between them lately. The moment of shared closeness over Ino’s rock prompted a compromise between the aggressiveness that colored their early relationship and the coldness coloring it as of late. For the past three weeks the two of them have had far more interesting conversations. They’ve even continued debates started by the elders underneath the courtyard trees. 

Sakura is becoming quite the rhetorician from all the practice. It’s a fun way to pass the time, and an important reminder that while the clan might share an overall frame of mind, individual members’ interpretations cover a wide spectrum of beliefs. 

Take Madara, for instance. Unlike Cunning, Madara crams meaning into his life with gusto. He fills the empty shopping cart of existence with premium organic hand-picked ideologies, and he is not afraid of the ideology-shopping process nor of its receipts. 

To Madara, giving up on constructing meaning in a meaningless world is worse than never realizing life is meaningless in the first place. Better to admit the farse _and_ remake the facade in a way that suits you. Why not? Consistency is pleasant. If it works for you, it works for you.

Sakura wonders where she fits in Madara’s facade.

“I’ve been thinking,” she says, holding on to Madara’s hand for longer than necessary, “that I’ve been unreasonable about this whole situation.”

Madara’s eyebrows disappear into his magnificent hair.

“Basically,” Sakura says, “I’ve come to the conclusion that if this is what the universe decided to throw at me, then there’s nothing I can do about that but accept it and do the best I can. Plus, I think the Clan could really use me. I’ve been trying to get down on paper as many medical techniques as I can remember, and it’s been doing a lot of good.”

Madara tilts his head like a young crow trying to puzzle out a particularly uncooperative snack. “What do you mean?”

Sakura takes a deep breath. “I mean, if I’m going to remain here, I should make myself useful, right? Clearly all of this happened for a reason. You were made my soul--bondmate for a reason. It’s for my own good, and for everyone’s own good, that we make things official.”

Madara snatches his hand away. Icy coils of shock reverberate outward from her chest, collecting somewhere beneath her stomach. This is the first time she’s seen him react to her so physically since…

“You want to be with me,” Madara says slowly, “because you think it’s the right thing to do? You think this is fate? Is that what you’re saying?”

Something has gone poorly here, and Sakura desperately searches for the proper thing to say to placate the man before her.

“Well, I mean...yes? I _do_ think it would be the right thing to do. And it _is_ fate. The third prophecy is obviously about us. _Something_ is meant to happen between us. And no one’s saying it, but they all obviously expect me to stick around, and it wouldn’t be in the Clan’s best interest if my abilities fell into the hands of an enemy.”

Madara shakes his head irritably. “I will admit with no shame that you interest me, and that it would please me for us to grow closer together. But not because you think it’s fate. Not because you believe yourself servile to some higher purpose.”

Sakura moves forward abruptly into his personal space, her face inches from his. He looks down at her, his face betraying nothing.

“You don’t even _care_ if this is what we’re supposed to do,” she says.

At this, Madara cracks a wry smile. “What we’re “supposed to do?” You want me to _tell_ you what to do? Or what not to do? You want me to assign _you_ a destiny, is that it?”

“No. _Yes._ ” She presses her hands against his chest, ignoring the sweat beading underneath her palms. “Don’t you understand? I can’t stand living like this.”

“You can’t stand living ‘like this’?” Madara gestures around him, to the forest and to his world. “Living with free will? Living with the ability to make your own choices? The ability to create your own destiny, to deny that one ever existed for you in the first place?”

“It’s _terrifying.”_

Madara grips her by the shoulders. “It frightens you because moving on means admitting that you once lived according to someone else’s rules. It frightens you because you have no experience living your life outside of someone else’s prescribed destiny. Your coming here could very well be entirely random, and that pains you most of all. You’d rather suffer if it meant believing your suffering held value.”

“But all of this _has_ to mean something!” She wants to throw something, and settles for kicking a sapling. It bounces back and taps her in the nose.

“No,” Madara says. “Things _happen_. But nothing _has_ to mean anything. Unless you want it to, of course. But you are the one who decides that.”

Sakura kicks the sapling again. This time she’s ready for the backlash. “So nothing matters and it won’t ever matter unless I feel like pretending it does.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s stupid.”

“It’s not. Can’t you see you have so much more freedom this way? You can let go of the thought that your life must be significant.” 

“ _Why am I here, Madara?”_ Sakura is yelling now; the forest has fallen silent around her and the only thing moving is Madara’s chest rising as he breathes--and Cunning, still circling above. “Why the _fuck_ am I here? It has to _mean_ something that I’m here! There’s got to be some sort of purpose I was made for, or some problem to solve. It can’t just be random. It _can’t_. And if there’s not something I’m supposed to change, or fight, or some duty to fulfill, then maybe me being sent here was just a mistake.” 

Madara is the first to look away. “I’m starting to wonder if that is the case, myself,” he says quietly. He steps around her and makes his way back to the compound. Sakura spends the rest of the afternoon rivaling the logging industry for number of trees felled per hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me every f’n time I see that video of the corvid harassing a small mammal across the street and every goddamn comment is all “omg!!!! You guys!!!! He is helping the mammal because he knows the cars will hurt it!!!! This is unquestionable evidence of empathy in the animal kingdom”
> 
> Listen. I know we all need a smile right now but End Inappropriate and Scientifically Baseless Assumptions About Animal Behavior 2020. Animals can be cool without us pulling a celebrity gossip magazine and wanting them to be Just Like Us! Read [this fucking cool blog](https://corvidresearch.blog/2015/03/16/crow-curiosities-do-crows-play-and-why/) made by a person who got a PhD researching crows. Crows are weird bastards just doing their Thing. They are just as fun for their own sake. 
> 
> Also holy shit where did all of you people come from.
> 
> Keep the comments coming you guys are so encouraging and great! Here are some more ideas if your head is a formless void like mine.
> 
> 1\. Tell me where the fuck you came from and how you found me  
> 2\. How do you feel about eating breakfast for dinner  
> 3\. What is your Favorite Corvid  
> 4\. Is water wet  
> 5\. Will Madara’s dick ever be wet  
> 6\. Leave a review in your native language if it isn’t English and force me to experience it through some horrendously inept translation software. You will receive your response through the same inept translation software, used in reverse. We will both have a great time.


	4. what in the gotdam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Izuna almost fucking dies, a big ass bird shows up, Madara kisses Sakura and is Not Okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By reading this chapter you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not reading this chapter on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information, and belief, The Bird will not make its way into the hands of Anish Kapoor.
> 
> Common Raven  
> 
> 
> Clever says non-binary rights.
> 
> I'm so proud of all of you who watched "He 10 Hours."

Sakura gets her wish. Something terrible happens, and she is the only one who can stop it.

It doesn’t unfold the way she thought it would. The Senju are not warring with the Uchiha and there is no red-eyed brother appearing from thin air to skewer Izuna, killing him and setting Madara off on a generations-long path of revenge and destruction.

But Izuna is still involved, which makes Sakura wonder about fate, and whether the people whose deaths become rallying points are always destined to die, even in other universes.

Izuna is dying, and in a moment of desperation she draws a summoning circle, filling it with drops of her blood just like she’d done hundreds of times before. But what answers her summoning is not a slug.

It’s a crow.

This crow is not like the others. This crow is like nothing Sakura has ever seen. Red bands and white tips do not mark this creature’s singularity; even its enormous size does not distinguish it. She has met Izuna’s favorite summon, a magpie named Itsumade, and her wingspan is 4 meters. Rather, this bird is black in a way Sakura never knew that black could be. It is captivating, an absolute void of _everything_ that seems to suck out the sun and replace its burning gaze with soft twilight.

The others in the room react after a mere second of hesitation; everyone throws themselves into kowtow save for Izuna, as still as death on his ruined sheets, and Sakura, too ignorant and exhausted to know who or what this creature is that she’s unwittingly summoned.

YOU CALLED FOR ME, the bird intones, eyes like white lead powder, like bleached white bones. Their beak is motionless and the words are dropped directly into Sakura’s mind with an ease signifying massive power. YOU CALLED FOR ME AND I HAVE COME.

“No,” Sakura begs. “I called for a slug. I have a contract with them. I don’t know who you are.” She looks around the room for help but no one has moved. Their faces are all pressed to the floor and they are silent. “Please, help me. I can’t repair damage like this without a team of medics doing sealwork.”

THE SLUGS DO NOT KNOW YOU. THEY HAVE NEVER KNOWN YOU, NOT HERE.

Sakura pushes more chakra into Izuna’s lungs. It’s taking nearly all of her concentration to keep him breathing now. This isn’t even healing anymore; it’s life support.

“I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know why my summoning seal called you,” Sakura says. “But if you can help me, then help me save this man.”

IZUNA IS DYING. The crow stretches out their neck, regarding the dying man with a single, empty eye. Their outline wavers, dark pulses of energy distorting its silhouette with oily black tendrils. YOU HAVE YOUR CATASTROPHE. ARE YOU NOT PLEASED? NOW THERE WILL BE BROKEN THINGS FOR YOU TO FIX.

Sakura does not ask them how they know. There is no time. She bows her head as much as she can without disrupting the flow of chakra from her hands into Izuna’s delicate epithelial cells. 

“I didn’t mean that. I didn’t want this.”

YOU WANTED YOUR LIFE TO HAVE MEANING. YOU BELIEVED YOU WOULD FIND IT IN TRAGEDY. THAT YOUR PAIN WOULD DRIVE YOU TO FULFILL A PURPOSE. WILL IZUNA’S DEATH NOT MOTIVATE YOU TO BECOME STRONGER?

“Stop! No! What do you _want?_ If you’re not going to help me then why did you even show up?” 

The bird opens black wings. The undersides are darker still, so dark her mind strains to comprehend it. Caught between the primaries and secondaries there is a vision, nestled soft and deep in the coverts. The vision is right there, physically, and yet it is not there, and her brain struggles to make sense of it. 

The vision is of her, and of the Uchiha Clan, all wasting away. Izuna’s death makes Madara a bitter, hard man and Sakura becomes paralyzed with uncertainty. Izuna is a footnote in both of their stories, a cautionary tale they tell others who see their brokenness and ask _but why are you like this?_ They are suffering, and it is meaningful. They are in pain, and it makes them strive to be better people. They are dying, just like Izuna is dying, only their deaths are so very, very slow.

Sakura viciously shoves down the panic that threatens to send her screaming from the compound. She faced down Kaguya herself; she broke the horns of the rabbit princess and gave Naruto and Sasuke enough time to seal the bitch away. She did not flinch then and she will not flinch now. She looks the bird in one of its cavernous eyes and makes her demand.

“Help me heal Izuna,” Sakura says. “If you do, I’ll bind myself in service to you. I’ll do whatever you want, give you whatever you want, if you help me save him.”

YES. 

The bird snaps their great black wings shut, and the room vanishes in a flash of blinding light. Sakura’s body disappears, burned away by the relentless white. She becomes nothing, a void inside a void.

Time passes.

When her vision returns to her, Sakura is in Madara’s arms, being deposited into her bed. Her chakra is nearly gone. The piece of her mind that stayed behind to watch remembers her pathways filling with a wild energy that reached into Izuna’s body of its own accord to tear the infection to pieces. She can’t remember how she did it, even with her chakra still reeling from the intrusion. It was so _easy_ and she can’t remember how she did it.

“He’ll live,” Madara says. “He’ll live. Thank you. _Thank you.”_ He rests his head against the futon and collapses next to her.

She doesn’t wake up for two days, and when she does the elders immediately summon her. Sakura approaches the council in the clothes she was put to bed in, barely taking the time to make her hair presentable. There are quite a lot of things that seem less important to her now, and the proper hairstyle to have when answering a council summons is one of them. Cunning rides on her shoulder, doing the best she can to tuck the flyaways into Sakura’s bun.

When she enters the room, the first thing she notices is the rucksack in the middle of the floor.

“Inside that bag are enough supplies to get you to the Crow Shrine,” says the clan’s wise woman. Her name is Tatsuo and she had been teaching Sakura how to embroider vaginas on the weekends. Now, her face is drawn tight with trepidation, and she won’t look Sakura in the eye. None of them will. Madara is conspicuously absent from his usual seat.

“You must go immediately,” Tatsuo says. “Someone will guide you part of the way, but the final bit of the journey you must undertake alone.”

Sakura picks up the bag, bows to the elders, and starts walking.

* * *

  
  


“Someone” is Madara himself, waiting for Sakura at the gates and dressed for a long trip. They each give the other a once-over, but the interaction is bereft of amorousness or even familiarity. They check one another for supplies, weapons, proper clothing, and then they leave. 

They haven’t spoken much since Sakura yelled at him. It seems to be the way things are going between them, for the moment. After Ino’s rock, tensions eased. After the Post-Training Incident in the forest, tensions skyrocketed. Back and forth, pushing and pulling, building and breaking. Every time she thinks she has a read on this man, he changes up the language. Or maybe it’s her. Maybe he’s been the same the entire time and it’s her own tumultuous self-reckoning keeping her from reaching stability with him. 

Sakura doesn’t know where Izuna’s brush with death puts them. Are they better off or worse for it having happened?

Madara’s face reveals no clues, and they head north without a word to one another.

Hours into the journey, Cunning drops from the sky onto Sakura’s head and strikes up a conversation about bees. It’s a welcome change from the heavy stillness between her and her soulmate, and Madara slips from Sakura’s mind for the rest of the day.

* * *

They make camp at the foot of a mountain, and though there is still an awkwardness between them, Sakura and Madara exchange words for the sake of communication itself.

_Put this there._

_Would you get--?_

_We need more wood for the fire._

_It’s in my pack. Left pocket._

Their conversation boils down to simple, functional things that cannot be misconstrued and which do not have meaning. Madara excuses himself, ostensibly to take a piss, but Sakura can see the sun-flash of powerful fire jutsu off in the distance ten minutes later.

“Oh, he’s got _his_ smalls in a twist,” Cunning says gleefully. She deposits her feathery, blue and white body in Sakura’s lap, twisting to show her belly: a bird’s ultimate show of trust for a human. Sakura begins stroking Cunning across the breastbone with her fingertips, just the way the jay likes.

“What is he mad about? Is he mad at me? I’m still freaking out, for the record. Who even _was_ that?”

Cunning whistles a two-tone note stolen from some mindless tundra bird. “Everything. No. Understandable. Clever.”

“What.” Sakura leans over to dig her water skin out of her pile of belongings. She takes a sip, the stale water better than anything after the long day she’s had.

“I was just being efficient. Oh, all right. Listen. The kid’s not mad at you. He’s mad that the crows are after you.”

“After...me? _After_ me? _Me?”_

“Yeah, yeah! It’s not just me keeping an eye on you, you know. There’s some big names up there watching to see what happens next.”

“What am I, free entertainment to you people? ...Birds?”

Cunning nips playfully at her fingers. “Playfully” for a blue jay still means bruises the next day.

“Pretty much. Listen, you were trying to summon a slug, right? That’s what you said?”

Sakura leans back on her hands, peering over her shoulder into the night. She can’t hear Madara from this distance, but she can still see the light of his fires, flaring on and off between the trees. If she pretends, she can feel the heat from here, too.

“I was,” Sakura murmurs, distracted. “I did it just like I always did before. The summoning, I mean. I don’t understand what went wrong.”

“Obviously, something or someone tampered with your connection to the slugs.”

Sakura pales at the implication. “Can someone _do_ that? Summoning is some of the most secure and powerful jutsu out there. Stable, too.”

“A powerful enough entity could certainly do the trick. Probably for your own good. Clever was right, you know. The slugs here _don’t_ know you. If you’d summoned Katsuyu without her knowing you, she might just kill you. The old ones are pissy like that.”

Sakura flops down on her back, leaving her legs crossed on the ground so as not to deprive Cunning of her lap.

“This is so fucked up. So what, am I going to meet another crow at the shrine named Smartass or something? There seems to be a pattern with these naming conventions, here.”

“Oh, Smartass lives down at the compound.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being serious and I don’t care.”

“That’s the spirit!” Cunning flies to the pot where their stew is bubbling and unceremoniously tosses the heavy cast iron lid aside. The jay helps herself to chunks of meat floating on the top. 

“So then...Madara is angry at this Clever for busting in on my summoning attempt and...what?”

“And pressuring you into indentured servitude, basically.”

“Oh, right. I did that.”

“You did that,” Cunning agrees. The jay finishes fishing out the rest of the chunks, leaving Sakura and Madara with a vegetarian-ish version of their meal. “So he’s not angry at you for what you did. I’d say he’s more worried, and this is his way of processing that.”

“Laying waste to the environment like an unhinged man child?”

“Growing up with a warlord father can do that to you. In spite of our best attempts, the boy did turn out somewhat socially-emotionally constipated. He thinks being stoic is a personality.”

Sakura snorts, then feels a little guilty for taking such pleasure in the dressing down of her soulmate. It isn’t like Madara had done anything _bad_ to her. Giving someone the cold shoulder, while not productive, is not the worst thing a person can do to another person. 

Still, she appreciates Cunning’s little bit of humor. The bird is a thief and a trickster, but she’d become quite perceptive to Sakura’s moods and generally attempted to cheer Sakura up when the ennui hit.

The flashes die down, and Madara returns to camp. He stares at Sakura long enough for her to start squirming, and then sits down to eat his meatless stew.

* * *

  
  


“This is it,” Madara announces at noon the next day. They’d started climbing the mountain at dawn, and now they have arrived at the mouth of a large cave. There are no outward signs of habitation, no down floating on the wind, no neon sign saying “Crows in Here!!!” with arrows pointing into the darkness.

It’s the first real thing he’s said to her since they started this journey.

“I can’t go inside with you,” Madara says. “You’ll have to go the rest of the way yourself.” 

He stops talking, but doesn’t move. He just stands there, and Sakura just stands there, and the whole thing is awkward as hell. They can’t just leave off on this note, Sakura thinks. She doesn’t know how long she’s going to be gone--the slugs had trained her for four months--and she doesn’t even know if she’ll survive whatever bullshit they throw at her. The mark on her back burns like it hasn’t burned since the first day. She’d almost forgotten about the thing.

“I just wanted to say--” she says, at the same time Madara says “Sakura, I want--”

They blink owlishly at one another, and a stray breeze sends an enormous dry leaf to smack her right in the face. Madara gently picks it out of her hair, but in spite of her bright red face, he isn’t sniggering at her. He just looks sad, and that’s so much worse than anything else he could’ve looked.

“Please come back to me,” he says. 

He kisses her. 

It’s soft and sweet and unlike the man himself in every possible way. His hands stay politely on her waist, and she doesn’t have enough time to react before he turns back and makes his way down the mountain. Her back burns and burns.

“Gross,” Cunning says.

* * *

  
  


The shrine itself is three miles into the cave, which should not be possible for a number of reasons. The size and shape of the mountain, for one. Also, the cave cants downhill and ends in a clearing containing the shrine itself, an unkempt garden gone wild with shrubberies, and an opening in the cave ceiling revealing a gentle night sky.

But Sakura expected something like this. She’s been around the block before with these summons and it’s always some mystical hoo-haa with their home base. The toads had their mountain, the snakes had their cave, the slugs had their...slimy forest thing. This is just standard.

She’s more distracted by the state of the shrine itself. The kindest word she has for it is “dilapidated.” “A run-down piece of shit” might be more accurate. It’s a simple wooden structure with the whisper of fine, ancient craftsmanship underneath all the damage the ages have done to it. Where it’s not moist and rotting, it’s dry and splintering. Viney plants hug the outside of the building in a way that screams disuse and not quaint aesthetic overgrowth.

Sakura approaches the shrine cautiously for a closer look. Cunning is perched on her head, again. For the vantage point, the bird insists.

“It’s...not what I expected, that’s for sure.” The whole place is quiet, the dust undisturbed. There is no one here, and she thinks no one has been here in a long, long time. Up close, she can see faded paint decorating the outer walls, geometric patterns in red, white, blue, and black. She steps inside, and here the paintings are more intricate, depicting corvids in all sizes, shapes and colors. They fly, they play, they sit on eggs, they sleep, they preen, and they sing. 

The ceiling has remnants of the most intricate painting of them all, a scene depicting three great crows adorned with gold leaf, their feathers inlaid with translucent, colored stones--one crow is black, one is black and white, and one is speckled. They surround a fourth in the middle, but this one has been destroyed by some great beast, if the claw marks gouging the image from the wood is any indication. Sakura can only see bits and pieces of the central figure; she makes out a great black beak filled with jagged teeth and a long, feathered tail, blue and boned like a lizard’s.

YOU ARE HERE. A pressure sits on Sakura’s chest, like the feeling of a storm rolling in. She turns, and the great crow is there, black and void and powerful, examining her with those horrible white eyes from a head brushing the top of the cavern.

“Are you Clever?” Sakura’s voice does not waver, and for this she is proud of herself.

The crow turns its head sharply to look at Cunning, who had abandoned Sakura’s head in favor of a gangly tree the moment the other crow appeared.

YOU TOLD, Clever says. Sakura isn’t yet an expert at avian body language, but she thinks Clever looks devastated by something.

“I told!” Cunning shrieks joyfully, leaping out of the tree to fly circles around Clever’s head. “I told! I told! I told!”

She makes a pass at the massive crow, dodging a snap from Clever’s heavy beak. She manages to yank out a feather from the corner of Clever’s eye and zips back into the tunnel with it, hooting through her closed beak until the echoes fade away.

Clever looks at Sakura. Sakura looks at Clever.

WELL I NORMALLY DO A WHOLE THING WHERE I INTRODUCE MYSELF AND EXPLAIN MY NAME, BUT I DO NOT FEEL LIKE DOING THAT, SUDDENLY.

“I’m...sorry?” Sakura shifts her weight to the balls of her feet, just in case.

I AM CLEVER. I AM NOT HERE TO FIGHT WITH YOU, GIRL.

“What are you here for?”

I AM HERE TO TRAIN YOU UNTIL YOU UNDERSTAND.

“Until I understand what?”

Clever’s white eyes flash with iridescent color. UNTIL YOU UNDERSTAND...YOU.

* * *

Clever flies Sakura out through the top of the cavern. Riding on a bird’s back is an exhilarating and terrifying experience. At first Sakura is consumed with fear, gripping tightly to Clever’s feathers and hoping she can hold on. After a couple minutes, Clever takes pity on her and tells her to let go. 

Clever’s chakra, the massive bird explains, will keep Sakura from falling. A surreptitious test or two confirms this claim, and after half an hour of flying Sakura is wandering to the tip of Clever’s tail, hands fisted on her hips as she examines the ground so very, very far away. She thinks about being afraid, and decides against it. She’s already so stressed out by everything else that a nighttime joyride on the back of a giant talking crow does not phase her. Sakura does not have time or room for new traumas, and certainly not silly ones about falling from great heights. 

She makes her way back to Clever’s head and sits cross-legged on the crown. It seems as good a place as any and its gives her a sick thrill to sit on a crow’s head instead of having it the other way round.

“Lord--Lady--Clever? Can I ask you a question?”

IT IS JUST CLEVER. GENDER IS SILLY.

“Oh, um. Okay. Sorry.”

THE SHRINE. YOU ARE WONDERING WHY IT WAS IN SUCH DISREPAIR. Clever banks gently to the right and begins to descend. Twinkling lights on the horizon suggest a town up ahead.

“I am. I’ve never seen a shrine like that, and it’s weird considering that you all are still around. Maybe if you’d left the Uchiha Clan, it would make sense...why don’t they maintain it?”

THE ADHERENCE TO TRADITION’S RIGID RITUALS IS HARMFUL GIVEN ENOUGH TIME. IT WAS NOT LONG AFTER I WAS BORN THAT WE MOVED TO ABANDON THE SHRINE. OUR PHILOSOPHIES ARE NOT ONES OF CONTAINMENT AND STRUCTURE. CONSEQUENTLY, THE SHRINE ITSELF WAS COUNTER-INTUITIVE.

“That makes sense.”

A flock of geese pass overhead. Even in the dead of night, certain migratory birds flew through the darkness rather than land to sleep. Some, like these, were able to sleep and fly at the same time, by turning off parts of their brain in shifts. Somehow, even half-asleep, they knew exactly where they were going.

INDEED. I MYSELF NO LONGER TAKE UP RESIDENCE THERE. WE ARE EVERYWHERE. THE SHRINE IS MERELY A CONVENIENT MEETING PLACE.

“Meet me down by the ramen stand kind of thing?”

YES.

Clever lands gently on the outskirts of the village. They wait for Sakura to clamber off, and then with an oily sigh they fold in on themselves to become smaller. It’s a very unsightly transformation that makes Sakura feel slightly ill. She prefers the modest _poof_ employed by her slugs to change size. Clever hunches down on Sakura’s shoulder and instructs her to move forward and to keep her hands visible at all times. These villagers, Clever says, have been pushed to the limit and will not hesitate long to attack a potential threat.

Sakura soon discovers why. 

A single guard leans heavily against the outer gates, and as she draws closer she can see the man is so sick he cannot stand on his own. He looks at Sakura with bleary eyes and once she assures him that she’s not there to cause trouble, he leads her to a barn with an empty stall where she can sleep for the night. Pungent aromas permeate the entire village on the way there, and Sakura is relieved at the overpowering cow-smell for cutting into the dying-human smell that hovers over everything else like a shroud.

She wants to investigate now, to start knocking on doors and crawling in windows--to _help,_ to be _useful--_ but Clever does not allow it.

YOU ARE WEARY. GO TO SLEEP. I WILL MAKE SURE NO ONE DIES, BUT ONLY TONIGHT. 

After what she’d seen them do with Izuna, Sakura believes Clever wholeheartedly. She sinks into the straw with a sigh and goes to sleep. The last thing she sees before she drifts off is Clever dissolving into a sleek, black haze.

* * *

The innkeeper--who apologizes profusely to Sakura the next morning on the guard’s behalf for bringing her to a barn and not a _proper_ establishment befitting _Lady Uchiha_ \--describes the state of the village to Sakura. The account paints a clear picture for any medical professional well-versed in public health. Sakura keeps track of the data points in her head: Large pockets of sick people in certain areas of the village; diarrhea and vomiting; violent, sudden deaths--oh, by the way, the Yamadas down the street aren’t sick, and it just so happens they draw water from their own personal well.

It has all the hallmarks of waterborne illness with fecal-oral transmission as the culprit.

True to their word, Clever had ensured that no one had died overnight. This helps Sakura's reputation immensely. Usually, the arrival of a foreign Authority in some remote village ended poorly for the Authority, plague or no plague. _You have to understand their culture,_ Tsunade always told her. _You can't just show up and say you're from the Government and that you're here to help._ People don't trust like that, especially not people who'd been doing fine on their own if not for recent troubles, thank you very much.

Telling villagers what to do without first earning their respect ends in huffiness at best, pitchforks and torches at worst. People don’t like outsiders telling them what to do, and they like health workers even less--understandable, given the amount of false healers wandering around. They’d been an issue even in Sakura’s time. But the village had seen at least three deaths a night for the past month and none last night, and clearly do not take Sakura’s arrival as a coincidence.

And, well, they’re right. Just not for the right reasons.

Sakura starts in at the first home, which contains an exhausted father with three living children, one dead child, and a dead wife. The symptoms she can deal with now: stop the liquid from going out, put more liquid in. Boil your water. Stop dumping your waste there. And then rise and repeat at the next house.

Less than 200 people live in this village, and Sakura manages to get through all the families in a single day with Clever offering silent chakra support from her shoulder. It does not escape her notice that every villager, the moment they notice Clever, shuts their mouth with a snap and grabs at the nearest talisman. It's a question for another time.

The next morning, she calls a meeting in the middle of the town at the well, and explains germ theory to the assembled crowd. They nod solemnly at her words, promise to adhere to them, and then go home. They’re not perky, but back on their feet, and that’s what matters.

“Well,” Sakura says to Clever, “I think we’re done here. We should stay for a couple more days to make sure everything’s good and then that’s it, yeah? So what was this lesson about, appreciating the things I already know how to do? Finding meaning in public health?”

HMM, Clever says. LET US WAIT AND FIND OUT.

* * *

  
  


Everyone is still sick at the end of the week, and seven more people die in spite of her best efforts to save them. The villagers aren’t upset with her; they see this sickness as punishment from an angry god, and understand that there’s only so much that Sakura can do about this.

“But I _told_ them--” Sakura is flushed and pacing behind the barn, watched by curious cows and one very old horse. “You saw them nodding, right? They were listening. I told them everything they needed to know. I explained germs. I told them what to do to fix their waste system, not to have the public toilets so close to where they draw water.”

YOU DID TELL THEM THIS, Clever agrees. They are horse-sized today, having grown tired of being small for hours on end. It pinches at the Self, Clever says, as though Sakura should be satisfied by this explanation. BUT THEY HAVE NOT LEARNED, AND PEOPLE ARE DEAD.

“So what am I supposed to _do,_ then? Is that the lesson? That I’m helpless sometimes and I need to get over it? That I’m not all-powerful and death comes for us all so fuck it?”

THAT IS NOT WHAT I PERSONALLY WOULD HAVE GLEANED, TRUE THOUGH IT MAY BE. Clever makes themselves small again and hops onto Sakura’s head. DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT THEY TOLD YOU? WHY THEY BELIEVE THEY ARE FALLING ILL?

“Yeah, they think it’s some angry god or whatever, that this is happening to them because they made it angry and they just accept what’s happening and won’t do anything because--oh.”

OH.

* * *

The second well meeting goes much better. After leaving the barn, Sakura walks into the forest and collects some small twigs and leaves, poking them into her hair here and there for that Authentic Forest Witch look. Clever produces a necklace adorned with the bones of tiny creatures, which she fastens around her neck. Clever also enlarges slightly to cat size “for emphasis;” one villager actually faints at the sight of them.

DO NOT BREAK CHARACTER, Clever said in the barn just minutes before. 

The response to her change in appearance is immediate and stark: _this_ , the villagers’ faces say, is a _real_ healer.

And then, Sakura tells a story.

“You have angered a very old god, a god of ancient rivers far beneath the surface of the earth. You have polluted their home with your waste, and they have answered your disrespect by putting sickness into your water.”

“What do we do?” A villager cries from somewhere in the back, faceless and timid.

“You need to dig new privies. Over there.” Sakura points. They follow her finger like kittens following a feather on a stick. “On the outskirts, away from anywhere you get your water. Or else you’ll anger the god.”

They’re halfway done digging the first new privy by the time she leaves an hour later.

Back in the air, Sakura lies face down and spread-eagle on Clever’s back.

“I can’t believe I just did that.”

WHAT, SAVED A TOWN FROM THEIR OWN FOOLISHNESS?

“Lied to them! I took oaths about that kind of stuff, you know.”

AND YET YOU HAVE SAVED THEM NONETHELESS. THE SORT OF CHANGE YOU WISH TO INSPIRE DOES NOT OCCUR FROM A SINGLE SPEECH IN A TOWN SQUARE. _THIS_ SORT OF CHANGE HAPPENS _NOW_ \--KEEPS PEOPLE FROM DYING. WHAT DID YOU LEARN, GIRL?

“I think...you wanted to show me how dangerous it is to believe so strongly in a system that it hurts you. They were so convinced in their own beliefs that they interpreted real-world events through those beliefs, instead of thinking things through. I know not everyone here knows about germs, but I _know_ people know not to shit in their own water supply. That was just a case of rigid thinking gone bad.”

EXACTLY. THEIR FAITH IN ABSOLUTES FAILED THEM, JUST AS IT WILL FAIL YOU.

But there's one thing bothering her, still. Sakura debates the merits of sound and silence, and as usual the former wins out. “Clever...did we need to let a bunch of people in a town die in order to teach me a lesson?"

PROBABLY NOT.

Sakura shivers. She'd become fond of Clever during their time together, but while Clever is, well, _clever_ , they possess a detached coldness for human life that hits Sakura unexpectedly at times. Like now. To Clever, humans can be allies and students, but they can also be tools and examples. Death and suffering do not phase them. Clever had practically brought Izuna back from the dead. If they'd been able to do that, why not save the villagers and then teach Sakura a lesson through demonstration? Couldn't they have had the villagers build the new bathrooms _and_ avoid the additional deaths?

Did Clever even care if she went back to teach the villagers about germs, gradually and with a respect that would carry the lesson through the generations? But Sakura keeps her worries to herself. She is beginning to have suspicions about this crow, and if she's right then this isn't the sort of entity she wants to have on her bad side. Perhaps not _all_ the old gods slept hidden in underground rivers, sheathed by absolute darkness. Will she become someone else's example, should she fail this crow-test of theirs?

"So...now what?” Sakura flips over onto her back, watching the clouds whip by overhead until she gets queasy. She rolls on her side to find the horizon, the only stable thing there is up here.

NOW, WE VISIT A FRIEND.

“Is it someone else from the mural?”

YOU ARE CATCHING ON REMARKABLY QUICK. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Madara will pop up in her future bird "lessons" so don't worry he'll be back.)
> 
> WHAT'S UP GAMERS I'm back at it again with another LIST OF COMMENT PROMPTS FOR THOSE WHO DESIRE THEM--no pressure--don't forget to SMASH THAT SUBSCRIBE BUTTON and ANNIHILATE THAT BELL ICON.
> 
> 1\. Do you feel relieved by the presence of the chase kiss? Did you go back up and check the rating to give yourself hope for the future?  
> 2\. Who is Best Bird?  
> 3\. Would you live in a dilapidated bird shrine inside an Impossible Cavern?  
> 4\. Do you have a prepared elevator speech on the ethics of medical professionals literally just lying to patients if it gets shit done? [This author does not endorse medical professionals literally just lying to patients--I know we are ALL out here separating fiction from reality and not conflating plot devices with the author's personal ethical beliefs, gamers!!!]  
> 5\. Flat pillow or fat pillow?
> 
> [ADVERTISEMENT: Play Fallout 4 so you can go read my Fallout shit. It's great, I promise.]


	5. IS THIS ALLOWED???

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura gets attacked by a long ass bird, Cunning hauls Sakura to spa day, and Madara GETS SOME.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has COITUS and it’s McFuckin kinky so if you anticipate the need of a fainting couch please contact your local fainting couch rental service 
> 
> Eurasian Magpie  
> 

Sakura hopes the next bird is a bit less horrifying with their methods of instruction. Clever seems the type of person to be at peace with themselves, but at the expense of everyone else; there is a selfishness to their nihilism that Sakura secretly disapproves of, and the sooner she can part ways with the giant crow--the raven--the better.

Partway to the next destination, Cunning arrives with breakfast and gossip from the compound. The Clan is talking about Sakura; she has basically become the Clan’s core entertainment. There are rumors spreading--some claim to have heard of her ascension to crow-godhood. Others think Madara got her pregnant by making passionate, forbidden love to her inside the shrine.

“So I may have started the one about you turning into a crow. Someone needed to make the rumor mill more exciting. Pregnancy rumors are trite.”

“Thanks for putting that out there, Cunning.”

WE ARE HERE.

Clever perches in a massive tree overlooking another mountain cave. This cave looks just like the one from before, though its entrance is scattered with evidence of the occupant, unlike the bizarre cleanliness at the mouth of the shrine cave. 

Sakura waits for Clever to hop closer to the ground. This does not happen. Both crows watch her make her way down the tree with great interest and no assistance. Not that she needs it, but sometimes she just doesn’t know what to expect with these birds. 

At the bottom of the tree, she waits. Clever stares down at her with empty, bone-white eyes. Cunning preens her tail. With no further instruction coming, Sakura makes her way to the mouth of the cave alone and cups her hands around her mouth.

“Hello? Is someone home?”

_A moment, please._ Shiny, black feathers catch what little sunlight can make its way into the cave, heralding the emergence of an enormous bird head. Black head, beak, and as more of the bird emerges Sakura can see a brilliant flash of white on the chest: a magpie.

But here’s the thing: the magpie keeps emerging. And emerging. And emerging. The magpie is long, like a dragon: 100 feet of feathery body with several pairs of wings and numerous scaly feet. It is unnerving in a way Sakura does not feel prepared to explain with words. She can hear Cunning snickering on the tree behind her.

When at last the magpie--if you could call it that--is fully out from the cave, her snakelike body curls three times over around the clearing where Sakura waits. Vicious claws, ten sets of them, gouge deep, angry lines into the earth below.

_I am Nimble,_ the magpie says. _I understand you are the girl from Elsewhere._

“That’s right.” Sakura looks her directly in one beady eye. The crows don’t like when people stare at the ground. It’s _too_ deferential. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to strike the balance perfectly between deference and irreverence that the crows love so much.

_How interesting. How fun. And I understand you are just arrived from a lesson with dear Clever. I’m sure you were well instructed in the hopeless art of trading one set of deeply held beliefs for another set of deeply held beliefs. They mean well, of course._

“Um.”

AND WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS, MY DEAR NIMBLE? TAKING THE GIRL TO WITNESS SOME DESPAIR AND THEN LETTING HER WALLOW IN IT? WHILE YOU PONDER YOUR FUTILITY, THE WORLD STILL TURNS.

Sakura does look at the ground then, just in case there is a helpful crevice for her to fall in and die to escape this awkward domestic spat. Cunning is vibrating with barely contained glee on her twig, and Sakura wonders if the shrine might have been cleared out for reasons other than the _purely_ philosophical. 

* * *

Nimble the magpie flies Sakura and Cunning to the top of her mountain peak. The experience is altogether unsettling whenever Sakura looks over her shoulder to see 90 feet of bird that _should not be there,_ so she does her best to keep facing forward. 

Icy wind beats down on snowdrifts so packed down with age that only blue light passes through them. A seal on Nimble’s back keeps her warm and oxygenated, but the sight of so much rock and snow this high up still makes Sakura shiver. It’s death in a way that only nature could display.

_Look there,_ Nimble says. She points with a single, angry claw. Sakura leans to the side to get a better look. Between the rocks and ice there is a natural pathway, a treacherous road snaking its way up the mountain to the very peak. All along it, Sakura can see it’s littered with corpses, all frozen solid, the tattered edges of their clothes fluttering madly in the wind.

“What are they doing up here?”

_There is a legend,_ Nimble says, _that the rocks on the very top of this mountain are covered in a lichen with the power to reveal the Truth of the universe. In search of this enlightenment, nearly all have died._

Jesus Christ. Sakura glances at Cunning, who shuffles her wings as though to say, ‘Well, what can you do?’

“Nearly all?”

_I do recall one young woman who succeeded in gathering lichen from the rocks._

“And what happened to her?”

_She got stomach cramps._

“Ah. Is the lesson not to eat things you’ve scraped off of rocks?”

_A funny one. But you know, if you are asking me to tell you what you should learn, given what you know of crow philosophy, you should know that you have not asked the correct question._

The corpses are unnaturally still, even for corpses. Sakura wonders how many hundreds of years they’ve been up here. Some of those threadbare shirt patterns look _old._

“They shouldn’t have looked for it in the first place.”

_Of course not. They would have been better off coming to terms with the fact that no Truth exists, and meditating on that until they find their peace with it._

Nimble floats Sakura back down to her cave in a sinuous wave of feathers and scales, Cunning following in the giant magpie’s wake. Nimble retreats backwards into her cavern until only a bit of her body pokes out; the part between her first wing joint and first set of feet, where “normal bird” turns into “unspeakable nightmare,” is just barely visible in the low light. If Sakura squinted over her shoulder, which she doesn’t do because there was no way she was taking her eyes off of this bird, Nimble looked _almost_ mundane aside from the size.

“That seemed a little too easy,” Sakura says.

_Recognizing the pointlessness of the search for meaning is the easiest task of them all. It requires nothing but the strength of your conviction._

“Right.” Sakura jumps off of Nimble and lands on the snow-packed ground in front of the mouth of the cave. “So, that it?”

_Not quite._

Sakura isn’t at all prepared for Nimble’s attack, for the vicious beak to be full of tiny, needle-like teeth. 

* * *

“This is some bullshit.” Bruised and covered in her own blood, Sakura stumbles and lurches through the forest, making a beeline for the crossroads town Cunning swears is up ahead.

This is not going _anything_ like she thought it would. Then again, she grumbles to herself, had anything gone the way she thought it would since she’d been cunt punted into this godforsaken timeline? No. So why would things start making sense now?

“I thought I was going to be apprenticed to the head crow summons and they’d teach me how to meditate or some shit. So far I’ve been conscripted into dubious public health care, shown a bunch of dead bodies, and brutally attacked in lieu of training. I feel like I'm being condescendingly read Not Giving a Shit: a Child's Primary by a bunch of weird bird gods.” Sakura pats her pocket, double checking the number of soldier pills she has left. If they make it to the village within the next hour, she won’t have to take another one.

“Yeah, they’re like that. Clever’s always been more predictable, though. Even _I_ have no idea what’s going on in Nimble’s head. That bitch is nuts.”

“Guess I would be too if I spent all my time in total darkness thinking about how nothing means anything.”

“It’s not the most productive use of time, no. At least you got a new crow technique out of it. That’s what she was doing, if you didn’t catch that. Nimble doesn’t usually bother letting people know she’s trying to teach them and not kill them. Although, sometimes both happens at once.”

The treeline begins thinning out, gradually revealing wide swaths of farmland covering rolling hills. It is late in the season, but she can still see laborers off in the distance, backs bent over in pursuit of their task’s completion.

“So we talked before,” Sakura says, “about your perspective on things. And how I’m too focused on being useful to others, which consequently makes me fall apart when I’m unable to fulfill that expectation.”

“Yeah.” Cunning lurches to the right, catching a bug midair.

“You _also_ think that there’s no inherent meaning to existence. Like Clever and Nimble. But Clever just substitutes their own meaning and Nimble does nothing. You don’t do either of those things. So what’s your deal, then? You seem happy. But how can you have the same base beliefs as them and be so different?”

“Hey, maybe I’m just leading you into the woods to kill and eat you. You never know.”

Sakura grunts and stalks off into the bushes. “I’m gonna pee. Just keep talking; I’m listening.”

“It’s what I said before. You can keep living your life and doing things. There will always be cause and effect. And the changes you make in the world can make you happy or sad or something in between. But the difference for me is that I don’t need it to _mean_ something, yeah? I’m not like, ‘today I saved a child from falling down a well, and now I have this many points to spend in the afterlife.’ That’s just one example. For the spiritual among us.”

Sakura sighs, as much at Cunning’s opacity as to her own inability to internalize the jay’s meaning. Also, bringing toilet paper with her had been an _inspired_ decision. 

“You have to take this stuff one thing at a time,” Cunning says. “What is something you want to do _right now?_ Something that would make you happy or feel fulfilled? _”_

Squatting in a forest with her pants around her ankles does not promote high level contemplation, but it doesn’t matter. Sakura knows what she’s been wanting for days now.

“I really want to see that butt head Madara again. Since I’m alone with you in the woods, I don’t mind telling you out loud that I think he’s kind of hot and I want to sit on his face. It’s been one of those days. I’ve got some ideas about what I want to do here, courtesy of being shown a bunch of dumb ass nonsense that I don’t fuck with. But first things first: Madara.” Sakura finishes up and calls her chakra to her hands, the clean burn of energy vaporizing any germs left behind. 

“Amazing. I’m proud of you. How’s your back, by the way?” With a flourish of blue feathers, Cunning drops onto Sakura’s head and picks pink flyaways out of her bun in what Sakura assumes is a display of affection.

“It’s warm pretty much all the time. He’s obviously thinking about me a lot. Especially at night, so he’s probably horny on top of everything else. And the outline is done. I understand the color will set in any day now. It’s got a lot of blue, actually. Of course I’d end up with a soulmark that looks like _your_ bitch ass.” 

A flock of geese travels overhead, drawing the eyes of bird and girl as they watch the inexorable compulsion of migration in real time. _They_ know where they are going, Sakura thinks. Unbeknownst to her, the geese think the same of her. 

“So hey,” Sakura says. “I know you’re not one of the creepy big ass birds, but you don’t happen to have a dumbed-down lesson to spoon feed me, do you? Some sort of practical demonstration? Is there a pile of wretched humanity somewhere that will make me understand your personal viewpoint?”

Cunning caws and chatters, frightening away a flock of starlings resting in a bush. “As a matter of fact, I did have something in mind. We have a ways to go before we get to our final creepy big ass bird, as you put it, so I put in reservations at the hot springs in the town up ahead. It’ll teach you about uhhhhh, you know, letting go and all that. Promise. Come on, slowpoke.”

“Oh, thank god.” Sakura feels a sharp tug on her backpack, and then she is suddenly airborne.

~Intermission~

~Intermission~

The best room in the entire resort greets Sakura upon arrival, as do a gaggle of resort employees. They are not surprised in the slightest upon seeing a normal sized blue jay drop a human onto the ground from twenty feet in the air. Sputtering, Sakura hauls herself out of the dirt and yells a few choice words at Cunning, but the jay is long gone. Figures.

Beautiful, soft, high thread count sheets await Sakura atop a sinfully plush futon. She rinses road grime off her body--the minimum amount required by polite society before sleeping in a borrowed bed--strips down to her underwear--now historically accurate!--and faceplants into the pillow. Sleep takes her within minutes.

When she wakes up, Cunning is there. On top of her head. As usual.

And so is Madara. Well, Madara is there in the room _._ Not on top of Sakura’s head. He is standing in the corner, brooding. The sun is about the right height for mid morning, which meant Sakura had slept through the afternoon and night into the next day.

“Hey,” Sakura says. She’s sure Madara has never seen her this undressed, but the man doesn’t seem affected at all, which is how she knows he _is_ affected. Outward displays of emotion define Madara’s character, subtle though some displays might be. Any lack of reaction sets off her internal alarm bells. 

“Sakura.” Madara nods his head at her. But for the tiniest hint of red on the tips of his ears, he is the picture of disinterest. She smiles, and he blinks at her. Waiting.

Words seem too banal given the history between them now; haven’t they talked and laughed and fought enough with words in the past? Sakura rises slowly from the bed like an evening flower in bloom, tossing her underthings on the bed and walking out to her private spring like she’s done this a million times before, like she can’t care less that his eyes follow her, burning and wanting. 

“Are you joining me?” She slips into the water onto the low outcropping used for a bench, sinking down up to her chin.

“I already bathed.” 

And isn’t that something, the undeniable rigidity in his tone of voice, the tone of a man wanting to lose control and refusing on all counts to do so? Her own power intoxicates her, makes her want to see this man on his knees in front of her before the sun reaches its zenith. 

This must have been what Cunning meant, Sakura thinks, when she spoke of things having no meaning but still giving happiness. Because fuck if she knows how wanting Madara fits into the grand scheme of her life, but fuck if she doesn’t want to do him dirty anyway to find out what happens next.

“Why don’t you go find me something for breakfast, then? Something light.”

He leaves without another word. Sakura leans her head back to watch him go, his image flipped on a horizontal axis. 

* * *

“He’s _here_. Can he do that?”

“Be here?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, no one said he _couldn’t_ be here. Why wouldn’t he be allowed to be here?” Cunning does not enjoy water, so she perches on the edge of the steaming pool, preening. Sakura lets down her hair and dunks her head in for a few moments, enjoying the sensation of the water pressed all around her. It’s been too long since she’s had the pleasure.

“I just thought, because of how serious the elders were about me going alone--well, he kissed me and left all dramatically, so I thought...I guess I thought I was going to be off in the wilderness alone for at least a year or something. You were _there._ He acted like it was the last time we’d ever see each other. Right?”

“Madara is a very dramatic person. You know this. It’s drama first, thinking second with that boy. He’d walk off of a cliff into a pit of lava if it made a statement.”

“Yeah, that tracks. Did you _see_ how horny he was?” Sakura checks the roof as well as the room, searching for a flash of black and red. True to form, Madara prefers entering a room with flair and not with a polite warning, so long as he’s been given prior permission to enter.

“And _how_. What’s your plan?”

“I’m gonna fuck ‘im, Cunning. I’m ready. I love Ino and I don’t know if I ever won’t love her, but I’m ready to try moving on. I just want to see what it’s all about. That’s the new me.” Sakura raises both fists to the sky. “I’m going to try things and see what it all means. No more waiting around for my destiny. And I’m going to start by finally seeing what _That_ is all about.”

“Sex?”

“With a _penis_.”

“Nice.”

* * *

Madara arrives with snacks, reminding Sakura of a documentary she watched once where certain male spiders presented their mates with food so as to avoid being eaten during the act of mating. Watching the way he scrutinizes her hands and mouth as she snacks, she can admit to herself that she does feel a bit predatory.

Clothing seems too much to contend with, for one thing, and she hasn’t bothered putting any back on. This is partly for convenience but mostly because she loves the way Madara has been keeping his hands primly in his lap across the table from her, almost as though he’s hiding _something_ underneath.

She finishes the last of the pomegranate arils with more satisfied moaning than is necessary, and then puts her hair up and out of the way, seven pins securing her bun to the back of her head. In another life, someone told her she looked alluring this way.

Madara remains in his chair, his back and shoulders formal and imposing: the outward calm a tell betraying his nerves more than anything else. He looks like a prisoner waiting for release, or execution, and she is warden of his future, at least for the next several hours. 

The wall seems as good a place as any to start. She stands up, rounds the table with slow, measured steps, runs a hand along Madara’s shoulders, across the fine lines of his face. The resort is quiet--no one steps along the hallway, no one bathes in the public pools over the divide as the heat of the day encroaches--and Sakura is emboldened by the emptiness of it all. 

She walks to the far wall, an imposing natural structure of smooth stone around which the room has been built, and sets her back against it, the coolness seeping into the heat her body gives off. 

The wet stickiness of her arousal spreads to her thighs when she presses them together, ankles crossed in front of her in affected relaxation. She lifts her chin in a summons to her soulmate and only then does Madara rise from the table, stopping four paces away when she holds out her palm, bidding him to stop.

“On your knees.” 

His face flashes defiance for a moment, and then-- _oh, holy shit_ \--he obeys her command, sinking down onto the mats and watching her, waiting, hands pressed into his thighs, barely hiding the way he trembles like a leashed dog straining after a rabbit. 

Sakura walks forward, pressing her fingers into his mouth, drawing out the moisture and using it to open herself up, pressing one, two, three fingers inside to ready herself for whatever he’s got going on in his pants.

Madara’s eyes glaze over as he watches her fingers working centimeters in front of his face, his breath becoming shallow and quick, his hands in a white-knuckle grip on his clothes, his body swaying forward by millimeters like he is drawn to her scent.

“Do you want me?”

“You know I do.” He looks up at her with red fire in his eyes and she almost gives in, almost collapses into his arms and into whatever desires he has of her. But that isn’t why she’s here today, why she let him stay. 

She presses her fingers back into his mouth, bites her lip at the hungry way he sucks her arousal off her fingertips, and slowly backs up until she feels the stone again, solid and supportive.

“Come here, mate.”

He crawls to her on his hands and knees--she feels even wetter just _watching_ him, this powerful man who destroyed her world supplicating himself for even the chance to pleasure her--and when he reaches her, sitting back on his heels, he waits again for her command. She slides a thigh up over his shoulder and he braces his hand against the outside, stabilizing her, before pressing his face up between her legs, licking a burning trail across her folds. His hair, feathered out from his face in damp disarray, provides an excellent anchoring point for her free hand.

He’s quite good at this, actually, and as Sakura squirms against his face she feels a twinge of regret not getting this done sooner. But then, it wouldn’t have been the right time, or for the right reasons. Cynical as she is, there is something sweet about them coming together like this after so many false starts. 

After she comes for a third time, legs so wobbly that his hands are the only thing holding her up, she commands him to take her to the bed and he carries her there in his arms with her legs wrapped around his waist. 

She kisses him for the second time and it’s dimensions beyond the one they shared in front of the shrine cave. This kiss is raw and hungry and tastes of her, and it holds promises that she plans to keep, once all of this bird fuckery is over and done with.

Once she has the sheets beneath her she stretches out her limbs, wanton and playful, watching as Madara divests himself of his travel wear as quickly as his dignity will allow. 

“Why do you want me?” He says, like he’s been waiting for her to boss him around like this for his entire life. When he’d blushed at the tea table with her, ages and ages ago, she never thought it would lead her here, to this, to a man hellbent on molding the world to his will now determined to mold his very self to her wishes.

She shrugs. It’s so much easier this time to answer, free from the pressure of the compound reminding her of the structures that suffocated her before, of the horrible freedom she now finds herself in.

“I just do.”

He closes his eyes, nodding, some of the rigidity leaving his body: an answer he approves of.

She puts him underneath her, for the emotional satisfaction of taking control as well as the practical benefits. She’s never been with a man before, although this certainly won’t be the first penis-shaped _thing_ she’s had inside her. Her and Ino’s frequent trips to _that_ store on the edge of town translated into quite the impressive dildo collection. But this is different, _and_ it’s been a while. 

Slowly, she lowers herself down, taking him bit by bit until their hips meet at the center, two perpendicular lines touching at long last in the middle. As she begins to move she marvels at the soft sounds of pleasure her soulmate makes, his composure slipping intoxicatingly into something feral and uncontrollable. 

It thrills her to see him like this, to see the sweat beading on his chest and know that it was her who put it there, it is _her_ body compelling him to grip at her hips with bruising force, _her_ movements milking every sound of pain or pleasure. 

She’s been looking for a place to Be and finds a piece of it here, keening softly as she comes again against the curve of his pubic bone, pressing her face into his heart as she fucks him through the waves of her ecstasy. Madara slides his hands up to take hold of her waist, driving her roughly down until he finishes with a soft moan that he muffles in her shoulder. 

Their bodies separate as she rolls off of him, but she takes up his hand in her own, connecting them somewhere between.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> COMMENT ON THE PORNOGRAPHY, DEAR READERS. ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?
> 
> BEHOLD the large-spotted nutcracker.  
> 
> 
> Optional Comment Prompts, for Those Who Desire Them  
> 1\. Are you not entertained???  
> 2\. Don't you want a mattress that good???  
> 3\. Do birds ever attack you for no fucking reason???
> 
> [Sculpture is _Trans ī re_ (2017) by Fredrik Raddum]


	6. what the hecc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura fucks Madara some more, Sakura invents nationalized health care, and You experience a stupid plot twist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ARCHAEOPTERYX  
> by Lisa Rosenberg  
> ~
> 
> Perfect as Nike.
> 
> Head bent, feathers  
> arrested.
> 
> The imprint  
> of upturned wings  
> a likeness
> 
> to wonder at-  
> your last
> 
> flight, dear prototype.
> 
> ~
> 
>   
> Credit: Prehistoric Animals
> 
> ~
> 
> ~
> 
> Thank you for reading, and may you never attract the attention of a bored chaos entity.
> 
> [FORESHADOWING](https://youtu.be/sCRVZQ2GHVE)

“What holds you back?”

“The idea that at the end of my life, I’ll look back and it won’t have meant anything.”

“Meant anything to who?”

“To me? And to other people, I guess. They’ll all forget me because I didn’t accomplish anything.”

“What does an accomplished life look like?”

“So I had an aunt once who never really became successful. She’d drift from idea to idea, business scheme to business scheme...nothing ever really hit it off. In a hundred years, what if everyone forgets about her?”

“Why will people forget her? Because someone decided she wasn’t worth knowing about and didn’t put her in a book somewhere?”

“Yeah? Yeah. Like, I know you keep telling me that there’s no inherent meaning to my life and that I should just do what makes me happy, but I still…”

“You still want to be acknowledged by others as worthwhile.”

“Yeah. And the more I think about it, the more it feels like a no-win situation. No matter what the people around you value, there’s _always_ going to be people who don’t meet that arbitrary mark, whether it’s wealth or invention or artistic talent. Some people will always be forgotten.”

“I will never forget you.”

“Thanks, Madara. I believe you.”

* * *

  
  


The third circling bird from the mural they find perched in a scraggly tree in the middle of a plain covered in tallgrasses undulating like waves in the ocean. From beak to tail tip he measures just longer than Sakura’s forearm; tiny, distinctive spots cover his chest: some sort of nutcracker or nutcracker adjacent. An unfamiliar, foreign bird Sakura barely remembers from grainy drawings in the Uchiha archives.

His normality startles her. After the unsettling vagueness of Clever and the serpentine form of Nimble, a regular bird can only mean that whatever weirdness he possesses would outstrip them both.

Cunning naps in Sakura’s pack, belly once again full of stolen snacks. Sakura walks forward cautiously, hand in hand with Madara who’d chosen to accompany her for the last bit of her journey. After three days of fucking like animals in the hot springs, they’ve worked out a surprisingly high number of differences. 

“01001111 01101000 00101110 00100000 01011001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00101110,” the nuthatch says, a cacophony of metallic shrieks emanating from its beak.

“Uh,” Sakura says.

“.... .- -. --. --- -. ·-·-·- .. - ·----· ... -... . . -. .- .-- .... .. .-.. . ·-·-·-,” the bird continues, twisting its head this way and that way like an owl.

Sakura and Madara exchange a bewildered glance. The bird’s attempts at communication sound like one of the old comm tower radios from Konoha going on the fritz. 

**Excuse me. I apologize. I forget what it is to make such sounds. It has been some time. I apologize.**

At last she understands the words, but they’re amplified and powerful, reverberating in her chest.

“It’s fine,” Sakura says. “I’m here for some training, I think? Please don’t attack me.” Madara gives her a disapproving look, but Sakura shrugs it off. Hey, if these birds want her not to give a shit, that’s what they’re going to get.

**I am not that shut-in Nimble. I do not brutalize strangers. Oh dear, that was rude. I apologize. Am I too loud? You are flinching when I speak. I will change again.**

“It is we who apologize, my lord,” says Madara, bowing. “Our intrusion on your land is not intended to cause you distress.”

“What he said,” hoots Cunning from within the bag.

“What’s your name?” Sakura asks.

“Blanket.” Her heart doesn’t feel quite so compressed at the new tone he’s chosen, but there’s still something _off_ about it, like he’s a mimic playing back recorded speech with no knowledge of his meaning.

“Your name is...Blanket. _Why_?”

“What A Silly Question. Why Anything?”

“Okay, your name is Blanket. There’s got to be a story in there somewhere.”

“It Is A Simple Story. When I Named Myself, I Thought, ‘Why All The Adjectives? What Is Wrong With The Simple Noun?’ And So I Picked a Respectable Noun. I Like Blankets. Everyone Likes Blankets. You Yourself Are Named In The Tradition Of Nouns, So You Have Some Understanding Of This, Cherry Blossom Girl.”

“Fair enough.”

“We Will Go Now. This Will Not Take Long, But I Would Like You To Return One Day, For Further Visitation. I Have Decided To Like You.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

Blanket fluffs out the spotted feathers on his chest and plucks out a single, downy puff, which hovers in the air when released, becoming larger and its edges more indistinct until it’s an orb of down ten feet across.

“Inside,” Blanket says, and flies into the feather’s center. He does not come out the other side.

“More weird shit,” Sakura mutters, and steps in after him. Her body feels _wrong_ , like it did when the Rabbit Princess had thrown her across time and space. She is here and not here, and must constantly think about her limbs in order to remember that they exist. As before, a moment and an eternity pass in agony before ending so abruptly that she stumbles to the ground.

The surface she falls onto is one of rough earth, peppered with rocks and debris from old buildings, the harsh edges of rebar poking up through concrete. It looks like what once was a city, but one that has been dead and still for an age. Blanket stands in the air, unconcerned with the fact that this should not be possible. Perhaps birds like Blanket did not need to adhere to the laws of physics.

“Look At This Place,” Blanket sighs. “Once This Was A Giant City, Long Ago. Now It Is Dust. I Spend Much Of My Time Here. There Is A Nice Statue Over There.”

Sakura looks around, taking in the jagged spires of a fallen civilization. It looks like the old city where the Uchiha Clan from her time bought their weapons, only significantly less tended to. Blanket hovers, without moving his feet or wings, in a straight line towards an area where the debris sits in neat piles off to the side. In the center of this space are several mounds, each about the size of a small living room. They look almost like…

“Mass graves?” Sakura looks to Blanket.

“Yes. I Made Them.”

Sakura raises an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t have thought you crows were given to sentimentality like that."

“After Seeing Clever Sacrifice Impoverished Villagers For A Child’s Lesson On Ethics, I Am Not Surprised You Feel This Way. At Times I Begin To Question The Old One’s Plan. ...I Am Too Forward. I Apologize.”

“Eh…”

“You Needn’t Defend Them. Listen, My Allotted Time With You Is Short, So I Will Be Brief.”

“Allotted by who? The old one? Is that like the First One?”

Out of the corner of her eye Sakura sees Madara shake his head imperceptibly.

“Did You Know,” Blanket says, ignoring the question entirely, “I Hear The Voices Of The Dead? Echoes Of Who They Used To Be. Perhaps That Is Why I Am So Sentimental. I Bury The Bones I Find Here, And Listen To Their Stories. I Find It Comforting And At Times Instructive. I Remember Them, Because Everyone Else Who Remembers Them Is Gone. Destroyed By Fire And Heat And Light.”

“A war?” Sakura kneels down and puts a hand on the surface of the nearest mound. The earth is dry and pebbly, still loose from being recently moved.

“A War Long Ago, A War That Destroyed Everything, And Created This One.”

“Why were they fighting?”

“Money And Power, Same As Always. I Have Seen The Other Side, And It Too Is Dead And The Land Poisoned.”

“The Great War is mentioned in our histories, Sakura. The first Uchiha to open the Sharingan did so after the light destroyed their old eyes. The Sharingan developed in the days after the killing light, as our founder lay dying from her wounds. She found and rescued The First Crow shortly after.” Madara keeps one hand on the pommel of his sword, surveying the clearing’s perimeter as he speaks. 

“Correct,” says Blanket. He looks at Sakura. “Would You Like To Bury Some Bones For A While? I Can Tell You Their Stories.”

Sakura smiles. “I think I’d like that.” 

* * *

  
  


“I know what I want to do,” she says to Madara, naked and entwined with him in her tent at the edge of Blanket’s field.

“What do you want to do?” He runs his fingers across her scalp and allows the subtlest of smiles at her pleased hum.

“I want to go into _politics,_ ” Sakura says.

The fingers halt abruptly. “You...do?”

“Why the tone of surprise?”

“When I took you to the meeting between clans, you seemed...quite put out. And disinterested. I wouldn’t have guessed your trials would inspire you towards further such endeavors.”

Sakura pushes Madara onto his back and pins his arms down, wiggling her hips into alignment and sinking down with a sigh. She’s found that having a dick inside of her inspires some of her best mental work. Madara cannot say the same, as the man is reduced to a handful of brain cells the moment she begins rocking back and forth.

“Well, Clan politics are boring, full offense. I’m talking _health_ politics, Madara.”

“Mmmng.”

“I mean, it really wasn’t an option for me back home because the system was already baked in, right? I was a medic because I was good at it and I wanted to be useful for my team, but it didn’t ever feel as satisfying as I wanted it to. Which made me feel guilty, because the whole philosophy they beat into you about being a medic is that it’s not about you, and if you feel like you’re being sacrificial then that’s the point. _Which_ is really messed up when you think about it.”

“Hnnck.”

“I started getting the idea when I was at the village with Clever, and then again after seeing all those dead bodies on the mountaintop with Nimble. What this country needs is a robust health system, including education, local empowerment programs, and low-cost resources until we can get a good subsidized program in place. The Uchiha and Senju clans would be happy to contribute, I’m sure. Seals are vital in medicine and Lord Hashirama’s got the glow hands like me.”

“Did Blanket contribute to this epiphany? He’ll be _so_ happy.” Cunning pokes her head through the tent flap, brazen and unfazed by Sakura’s ass.

Sakura throws a pillow at high speed, nailing Cunning right in the beak. “Go _away,_ Cunning. Your sexual interruptions are becoming a bit too frequent to qualify as “accidental” peeking.”

“Whhrllglg,” says Madara, gripping Sakura’s waist hard enough to bruise as he comes. Sakura waits until he’s finished before lifting off, pushing his head down pointedly so that he can finish her off and clean up the mess while he’s at it.

“Blanket just reminded me why I care,” Sakura says, Madara’s head moving desperately between her thighs. “I’m really starting to appreciate this whole idea of not making my life about Meaning, but that doesn’t mean people don’t have real problems, right now. Problems that I can help fix. First, a joint medical council. Ideally, a representational local government. None of this military state shit that worked _so_ well last time. Hey, watch the teeth down there.”

“Mmph.”

* * *

  
  


“I don’t want to marry you,” Sakura says to Madara once they’re back at home. The return to normalcy, to their little dates in her room, feels like emotional whiplash after the bizarre last few weeks she’s had. 

Cunning disappeared without warning one warm summer day. Sakura hasn’t seen any sign of the little bird for an entire month, so strange after hardly a day going between her visits. 

Madara looks up from the chessboard in alarm before schooling his face to something more calm.

“Is that so? May I inquire as to what inspired this decision?”

“I like you, I do,” Sakura says, “but I don’t really want to get married right now. Maybe ever. It’s just another one of those things that I’m figuring out I wanted because people thought I should. I have nothing against it, I just don’t want to do it. I like being in a stable relationship; it makes me happy. But all I can think about when I consider a wedding is how fast I can run to the nearest border.”

“You know this already, do you not?” Madara smiles at her like a crow cornering a rat alone in a chicken coop. “You made the trip many times, before you settled in.”

Sakura rolls her eyes. “Oh, ha, ha. Well, I’m glad you’re not making a Thing about it. I was worried this conversation would be awkward.”

Madara clears his throat. “Well, we couldn’t have that, now could we?”

They finish their game and retreat to the gardens, to the same bench under the same stars.

* * *

  
  


Izuna becomes Sakura’s shadow over the next six months as she initiates her Thirty-Five Step Plan to Become the Fire Nation’s First Minister of Public Health. Every day it seems like she has to add another step, mainly due to all the things Izuna politely points out that Sakura hasn’t even considered, such as how she plans to nurture long-term localized change and how a medical supply chain will work when there’s not even a non-medical supply chain in place.

It’s difficult work, and she’s frustrated at least once a day, but it’s worth it for every tiny step forward she takes. The first time an outsider approaches the Uchiha Clan to offer assistance in delivering emergency supplies, she almost cries. 

The whole thing is still a giant mess, but it’s _working._ Fortuitously, her frequent healing visits in the last year to local towns ensure that most civilians and those in vassal clans trust her, and those that don’t can be convinced by their neighbors that do. 

She meets again with Mito Uzumaki under much better circumstances, and as she predicted the woman is interested in the idea of medical cooperation, as is her husband. It’s the type of feel-good initiative that Sakura remembers Hashirama having been known for, and Mito is there to guarantee that his contributions stay grounded.

Izuna keeps Sakura grounded, and Madara keeps her inspired. She needs both of them, especially on days when the conversations have been more like arguments than anything else. Change is difficult, and everyone has a million ideas, half of them terrible, on what the best way forward is. 

It feels a lot like shadowing Shizune to learn about hospital administration. The difference now is that Sakura isn’t doing this to prove something to someone, even herself. She’s doing it because it’s necessary, and someone ought to do it. And if it makes her feel good to do it, then so what? 

It’s slow work, and Sakura is prepared to die (preferably at an old age) without seeing it finished. These things can take generations to set in. Maybe when she gets to the end, it won’t feel like she’s finished something but only scratched the surface. Maybe there won’t be a moment in her lifetime when she looks around and feels validated. Maybe it’ll be hard and every day will be full of deaths and disappointment and steps backward when all she wants to do is run off to the horizon. 

And every day she is more and more at peace with this.

* * *

It’s been two years since her arrival in this world, and Sakura stands in front of the lavish full-length mirror in her rooms, stripped bare to the waist and looking over her shoulder to see her back. She’s seen the same completed mark on Madara, but it feels so much more significant to behold the shape on her own skin.

What she thought was a bird...isn’t, not quite. It has the wings, the beak, the feathers, but there is also more. Conical teeth line a beak which poses upside down and nearly parallel to the backbone. The neck of the creature is bent back in a facsimile of death, its broken vertebra contorting the body to fit between her shoulder blades.

Red rings surround the eyes--two large eyes where eyes should be and several more eyes where eyes should not be--eyes upon eyes line the edge of the beak and continue halfway down the creature's neck. Blue, black, and white feathers coat the body in a pattern reminiscent of a blue jay, but something about it feels far more ancient. This creature is old and dead like a faded scrap of fabric caught in ice on a mountain peak.

Vicious claws poke out from the creature's wrist bones where all other birds have only feathers; the claws cling to her her skin for purchase, stabilizing the mad posture by digging in to her flesh. And the tail hosts a curious meshing of bird and reptile: it is long and clearly boned, but feathers fan out from the center all the way to the tip. An odd and unsettling thing.

The First Crow, Madara says as he traces the lines that match his own.

There were some who said she had other forms. An old woman traveling the road. A child jumping from tree to tree like a squirrel. A lonely young man searching for his lost love. A blue horse, once, just for the hell of it.

Sakrua thinks of the mural in the shrine, thinks of the central figure that had been destroyed by claw-gouges that would have been finger-deep had she reached out to run her hand within the grooves.

She looks at her back in the mirror, and thinks of the final vision-prophecy again, though she places much less stock in such things nowadays. Still, she stares into the red-ringed eyes on her back and wonders. 

* * *

She and Izuna throw a party in the garden, partly to celebrate the first successful joint-Clan summit to discuss plans for inoculation research cooperation, but mainly just for fun--not everyone in the Clan follows her political adventures. They're not nearly as exciting as her crow-based adventures, after all.

Sakura sits on Ino’s bench next to Madara, both of them mildly tipsy and using the excuse of alcohol to lean against one another in public. Although Madara had never been one to hide his beliefs or intent, he does not often show her physical affection beyond their private moments together, so she relishes this moment of alcohol-fueled contact.

It’s really funny, actually, sitting here watching the Uchiha Clan dance, sing, tell stories, prepare and eat street food, and watch the crows do the same. Sasuke and Itachi both had been dour men; that and the isolated nature of the Clan that Sakura remembered as a child did not lead her to believe the Uchiha did things so crass as _party._ And yet, here they are. Partying.

Over there is the elder she remembers from the time shortly after her release from the cell, the one she asked about the third vision hoping for some sort of lifeline to cling to. He’s having some sort of drinking contest with a deer-sized jackdaw. And there is Elder Tatsuo kneeling in front of Ino’s rock, running her gnarled hands over the surface. She’s having a quiet conversation with a woman next to her. Their heads are together and bowed.

“I’m glad you’ve found a place for yourself here,” Izuna says, approaching the bench and gesturing for Madara to scoot down. He takes his brother’s place. “It seems like things are going well for you. I worried for you, at the beginning. You were so frightened then, I thought you might always remain so.”

“Me, too,” Sakura says. “I don’t think the old me will ever completely go away, though. I don’t think it ever does, for anyone. But I like the new me I’m making. She’s more fun at parties.”

“She is,” Izuna agrees with a nod. “This reminds me of something, actually.”

“Yeah?”

“Several years ago I found myself at a party much like this, for much less happy reasons. I hadn’t chosen someone to marry, you see, and that upset some of the Clan members who were concerned the main family line would die out, seeing as how Madara insisted on waiting for his soulmate to arrive.”

“Really? But they all seem so laid back about stuff like that.”

Izuna smiles wryly. “That is likely because of the precedent I set. My refusal to play their matchmaking games turned much of the Clan away from meddling in the main family’s relationship affairs.”

“What about now?”

“My mind hasn’t changed,” Izuna says. “I was so busy at first trying to fit myself into the mold of the perfect Clan son that I didn’t stop to think that I might be forcing a square peg into a round hole. I doubt I’ll ever get married, or have any sort of romantic partner. The concept has never interested me beyond duty, and once I no longer held myself responsible for that duty, the urge to find my other half ceased altogether.”

“And now you’re happy.”

“I’m on my way there. Seeing you two helps.”

He raises his glass at her and they toast, sipping at the warm sake while the stars come out. Eventually, the guests trickle out of the garden until only the two brothers and Sakura remain, the air full of that special sort of stillness that only happens after a really good barbecue. Everyone is in bed, or drinking somewhere else, or inside some _one_ else.

The scrape of keratin talons on clay roof tiles alert the remaining three revelers to the final guest. Sakura yawns, leaving it to Izuna or Madara to look and greet the late arrival. Close as she is, she feels the shift of their bodies as they turn and knows the minute they lay eyes on the interloper that something is not right. They grow tense and motionless like prey.

“Someone is here to see you,” Izuna says, his voice tight. “I’ll speak to you in the morning, Sakura.”

He vanishes into the nearest doorway. Madara stands, ever so slowly.

Sakura begins to turn her head to the rooftops but is stopped by Madara’s hand on her cheek, turning her head to look up into his face.

“I want you to know,” Madara says, “that your coming here was the best thing that has ever happened to me. No matter what else, I want you to remember that.”

Sakura gapes at him. “Am I about to die? Are you all sacrificing me to some bird god? Are _you_ about to die?” 

He laughs, a small quick thing that startles her for its rarity. “I don’t think so,” he says. He glances around the garden for any lingering bystanders and, satisfied with his assessment, bends down to kiss her forehead. Somehow, _that’s_ the thing that gets her knees weak. Strong, sure arms wrap around her waist and he holds her to his chest, tucking his chin over the crown of her head like he knows she likes.

“May I wait for you in your room, my lady?”

She shouldn’t be swooning, not at her age, but still. But still.

“You’d better.” She gives his wonderful ass a swat when he turns to leave, disappearing as Izuna had into the nearest doorway.

And then Sakura is alone with the visitor. She turns to see a feathered shape, backlit by the full moon and hidden in the dimness of the dying firelight, perched on back legs and clawed wings on the ridge top of the main house.

The great body unfurls and reveals itself bit by bit as the creature enters the garden, the embers of the bonfire illuminating what the shadows had hidden: conical teeth line a beak black and shiny; then come the red-rimmed eyes, numerous and sharp; here comes the long, long neck and sinewy body lined with feathers blue, black, and white; there, the claws balance her descent at the wrists of her wings; at last uncoils the long lizard tail, boned and arrayed with stiff plumage.

“Nice party. Where's _my_ invitation, huh?”

Sakura drops her glass, shattering the crystal against the river rocks making up the path.

“Cunning?” 

* * *

  
  


There is a small lake deep in the forest on the Uchiha ancestral lands, surrounded by trees so thick and tall that their bark is iron-tough and you can’t see even halfway up the trunk from the base. Moonlight does not reach the forest floor here, but Sakura picks her way through the dead leaves and doomed saplings by the faint red glow of Cunning’s markings.

She knows the lake is not just a lake because no ripples mar the surface; the edges do not lap at the banks. It would seem dead but for the smell of life all around her. In the center of the lake Sakura can see the faint shimmer of scales signifying the school of koi resting beneath the surface.

Cunning passes through the forest strangely, her body moving in an alliance of its reptilian and avian qualities, like nothing Sakura has ever seen before. When she arrives at the lake’s edge she stretches out her long neck to peer closer at the fish, startling one into darting away before it calms, returning to the safety of friends.

“The more times I practice being happy,” Sakura says, “the happier I get. I used to make fun of people who would put little notes to themselves on their bathroom mirror. Like, “you’re going to kill it today!” and I thought it was so dumb. But then I realized I was just being bitter and there actually is something to pretending you’re okay until you’re actually okay.”

Cunning is silent for a long time, and then she speaks: “Your pain will always be trapped inside you, striking out at the edges of your soul every so often, but it will become smaller over time and the striking less frequent. 

“There will be times that you are not happy no matter how many bathroom notes you write, but there is no grand moral statement in causing yourself pain on purpose out of duty, because pain also has no meaning on its own. Do not trap yourself in the expectations of others, in how they think you should feel. I think you're finally beginning to get that through your thick skull.”

A dragonfly darts out foolishly from the reeds, landing directly over the school and providing a late night snack for an opportunistic fish.

“I hope you’re right,” Sakura says. “Because I’m sure as hell not going anywhere. I realize that now. Might as well live where I live, in more ways than one.”

“Makes sense to me,” Cunning replies. The giant beak opens, flashing fangs larger than Sakura’s hand. What does she _need_ all of those for, Sakura wonders.

“I have a reverse party favor for you,” Cunning says, her voice oily with the promise of shenanigans. 

Sakura turns to face Cunning full on. She’s not expecting an attack like she got from Nimble--Cunning, thankfully, possesses a modicum of compassion in spite of her irreverence--but at this size Sakura shudders to think what kind of trick Cunning could pull on her.

Cunning turns her body, mindful of her tail, to match Sakura’s stance, planting her taloned wings in the damp forest floor. The giant beak opens wider, and in the back of Cunning’s throat a pinprick of light grows larger and larger until it encompasses the entirety of Sakura’s perception and she finds herself once again looking into a vision like the one Clever had hidden away in their wing.

She sees the Clan, she sees Fire Country, she sees Cunning small and _normal_ , and she sees herself. Images of the past, present, and future jumble into a senseless cacophony as the vision takes time to sort itself out into what it wants to be.

The oppressive, choking darkness of the space in between, where she’d been thrown into and then pulled out of, surrounds her briefly and then she is there in Ino’s backyard, behind the house they’d moved into right before the Fourth War. They’d both just turned nineteen and were in love. Now she sees Ino, day after day, tending to the flowers and crying, falling asleep under the rosebushes and waking up shivering covered in dew.

Sakura feels time pass and there is Ino again, laughing with friends and drinking in the garden. They’re all surrounding a rock that has its own bottle of beer balanced on it, open but untouched. The rock is painted pink. From within the house, a voice calls out and Ino enters through the back door. 

Time passes again and Ino is sitting near the rock holding hands with a woman Sakura doesn’t recognize. Ino runs her hands across the rock. Again, and Ino comes out to the garden with a toddler on her hip; when she places the child down they run to the rock and sit a toy car on it. This is clearly a ritual of some sort, as Ino watches expectantly for the child to pat the rock like a dog and whisper something into the cracking paint. Again and again Sakura watches Ino enter and leave the house, sometimes alone and sometimes with someone else, growing older and older until the lights go off in the house and everything is silent.

The vision pulls back and shifts, and there is Ino for a final time, young again and sitting on the edge of the waterfall cliffs at the Valley of the End, the familiar shitty beer by her side. She has her hand in her lap and she’s tracing the lines of her palm with the fingers of her other hand, quietly contemplating. She is weary, but happy. 

When she looks up, it’s directly into Sakura’s eyes. Ino shrieks, sending the beer toppling down the waterfall, and then the vision vanishes, leaving Sakura Ino-less on the banks with soundless tears running down her face.

“Thank you,” she tells Cunning. “She looked happy. Was that real?”

“It was real.”

She’s never heard Cunning so serious in all the time she’s known the annoying little cunt. That alone makes Sakura believe her.

“Thank you.” 

“I’m proud of you,” Cunning says. The great bird shifts her weight forward onto her wing-talons, her enormous, many-eyed face drawing level with Sakura’s. Sakura can feel her legs quivering underneath her skirts, but she does not shrink away from Cunning’s attention.

“I’m proud of you,” Cunning repeats. “For what you were and what you became. You have come a long way from that girl I pulled out of the rabbit-hole.”

Time itself takes the forest into a steely grip at Cunning’s matter-of-fact statement, halting every molecule until all that moves is Sakura’s racing thoughts and the slow slide of fish bodies tumbling in sleep. Sakura’s hands fly out to grip the sides of Cunning’s toothy beak for purchase. Cunning allows this. 

“You... _you_ brought me here?” A thickness threatens to overtake Sakura’s throat. It isn’t anger, or sadness, but something equally as powerful. Something that could swallow her up if she let it.

“I did,” Cunning says. “Sometimes, when I have nothing better to do, I fly in the spaces between worlds. I severed the tethers binding me to my mortality long ago, for life is absurd, but not so absurd as the rules governing life. I have always thrived in chaos, in places without rules. And where there are rules, I break them. It is an easy thing for me to leave this place and drift along the currents of reality. There I found you, drifting. Dying, forever. _She_ sent you there. I pulled you away. _I_ snapped your tether.”

Sakura looks down at her palms, empty now for two years and replaced by a burning monster of a bird on her back.

“So it wasn’t destiny after all. It’s nice to have an answer, finally. I don’t want to need one, but it’s nice to have regardless.”

“I don’t think there’s any shame in that.”

Sakura sniffs, wiping away some of her tears and snot with the sleeve of her very expensive party outfit. 

“So that was all your plan, huh? Going and visiting those other birds? Seeing all that weird stuff?”

Cunning calls out, a long harsh note that fills the space above the lake. Sometimes it’s easy to forget what she is, until she acts _bird_ again. Sakura wonders if Cunning feels the same way about her, if at times she forgets that Sakura is human. 

“I didn’t plan the outings, no,” Cunning says, head tilted to catch the last of the echo. “I sent requests to my children, errant that they are at times, that they _assist_ with the training I had in mind for you. The rest was all them. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting them to show up at all, though Clever never misses an opportunity to be first in line and make an Entrance.”

“They seemed to enjoy that, yes. The drama of it all.” Complete with the exciting backdrop of a dying Izuna.

“They’re all just as interested in you as everyone else, ya know. Even Nimble wants to know what happens next, and _she_ hasn’t interacted with anything to do with humans for decades.”

“I’m guessing there’s a whole story, there. With the philosophical differences and the shrine and all that.”

“Like you _wouldn’t_ believe. That’s family for you.”

Cunning lowers her head to the ground and Sakura steps onto the crown, mindful of Cunning’s crest. It is a wonderful subversion. Carefully, Cunning scales the largest tree to the very top, where the branches are still thick enough to take the weight of bird and girl. The two of them stare up at the moon, full and beautiful and empty of homicidal rabbits.

“Which fish am I, I wonder? Which fish will I be?” Sakura asks. “The one that sank to the bottom, or the one that swims away?”

Cunning does not give her an answer. She knows Sakura does not need one anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What the fuck even was this. This was some weird ass shit. What the fuck.
> 
> LAST COMMENT SECTION IS A FREE FOR ALL.
> 
> If you're from the future and reading this, I DO absolutely appreciate and accept comments on stuff from the future. Future Me still appreciates your thoughts. PLEASE COMMENT I LOVE THEM.
> 
> If it is NOT clear to you by now, Cunning's true form (as well as Sakura's soulmate mark) is meant to allude to the archaeopteryx. Her soulmate mark specifically invokes that famous fossil that I embedded at the start of the chapter.
> 
> ~
> 
> Here are two great poems about the archaeopteryx; both inspired the way I described the Back Tatt:  
> 1\. [Archaeopteryx, an Elegy](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56497/archaeopteryx-an-elegy)  
> 2\. [Archaeopteryx](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=40212)
> 
> ~
> 
> If you want to follow me on tumblr, I post chapter updates from guiltyfandomtrashwonderland, my writing/fandom sideblog. 
> 
> A sequel for this has been written. Do not read it unless you like medical mysteries and can stomach epidemic drama. This story is perfectly fine as a standalone!

**Author's Note:**

> Because I care that you cared enough to comment, everyone will get their own custom reply and it will be (1) stupid and (2) heartfelt.


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